The Hamblin Victims Statements contain ample amount of information as to the patterns of the alleged LDS Church of Satan, and the most relevant information consists of statements alleging that CS members pick their residences based on an existing CS presence in a particular location. During the Hamblin family’s time in New York, the CS was alleged to have occupants in all three units at 77 Touraine in Portchester, New York. The landlord was allegedly the CS Punisher for the area, and would bring children who weren’t compliant with their parents’ abuse to the basement at 77 Touraine, where he would torture them with electroshock.
Prior IRA articles have noted the clusters of alleged CS members in certain neighborhoods and areas within Provo and Spring City, Utah. Specifically, IRA has covered the Little Rock Cluster, detailing the presence of alleged CS members clustered in various condominiums and private residences within the neighborhoods off of Little Rock Drive and Little Rock Lane. The CS had-and arguably still has-a presence in the Joaquin neighborhood of Provo as well. Joaquin is a neighborhood inhabited by rental units and apartment complexes, where the students and recent graduates of BYU live while they pursue their studies and early jobs.
The major known presence for the CS lies east of US Route 189, where the Edgemont, Edgemont South, and Edgemont North Stakes are dominated by alleged LDS Church of Satan members. The real estate holdings cluster up and down Little Rock and Foothill Drives, and it is those real estate holdings that offer clues into the unnamed possible CS members. One family in particular stands out amongst the residents of the various neighborhoods within those stakes, both in terms of sheer number of real estate holdings and rank within the stakes. That family first came to IRA’s attention in late 2022.
The Anderson Memorial
Britton Roney, second councilor in the Edgemont 14th ward, stood at the podium on December 17, 2022. He was there to deliver the opening remarks for the memorial of Carma de Jong Anderson, alleged CS matriarch, mother of Roselle Stevenson, and grandmother of the Hamblin daughters, who alleged that their mother and father’s families were part of a multi-generational satanic group operating within the LDS. Roney noted that Apostle Gerrit W. Gong was presiding, and after Roney delivered the opening remarks, Shawnee Smith, Carma’s adopted daughter, delivered prayer.
To those watching, there would have been no indication that this family and dais full of people had been accused of abuse spanning almost century, from the days of Gerrit de Jong, Jr. to at least 2006. The alleged abuse encompassed child rape, animal torture and dismemberment, human sacrifice, and cannibalism. The people assembled that December day to honor Carma de Jong Anderson’s life looked normal, even pedestrian. Therein lies the challenge in identifying and battling evil: it presents as underwhelming and even normal, masked by beatific smiles and outwardly quiet personas.
Britton Roney’s outward appearance was no different from the rest of the assembled mourners that day. His family had migrated to Utah like so many others, with most of the eight Roney children from the prior generation being born in Santa Monica, California. That generation would expand over time as patriarch Arden Roney added additional children, but the original eight Roney children were Nedra Dee, Rick Alin, Mark Adair, Blake Marshall, Derek, Brooke Brennan, Burke F, and Park Randal Roney. The Roneys had gradually emigrated from Tennessee to Missouri, and then to California, and finally to Utah by the time the children were grown.
The college town of Provo is a Mecca of sorts for the best and brightest of the LDS, a place where LDS youths can go to get an education steeped in LDS culture and values. Their parents know that their children will be ensconced in an incubator for young adults that reaffirms and reinforces every lesson instilled in LDS children from their earliest childhood days. Those children know that BYU is a place to get a good education, with a built in network of potential employers among its alumni. BYU is a place where the young adults of the LDS go to get finished, polished off into educated, employable adults, and BYU is very often a place where students meet their future spouses.
It is the perfect recruiting grounds for an organization like the LDS Church of Satan, whose members own a good many of the rental units in the Joaquin neighborhood. That neighborhood has a history with CS members stretching back decades, with many named CS members either having lived in the Joaquin neighborhood, or owning property within the neighborhood in the present day. David Lee Hamlbin’s mother, Mary June Adams, owned property throughout Provo, including the Joaquin neighborhood, and those properties are now in the hands of her children Krii Tuttle and Susan Christensen.
Mary June Adams, like Carma de Jong Anderson, exerts an influence over the affairs of the CS even in the present day. Carma planned out her funeral meticulously, and sources informed IRA that she had designated every speaker, including Britton Roney. Roney’s connection to Carma de Jong Anderson was simple: she was a long time member of the Edgemont 14th ward, where Roney served as second councilor. Even a cursory glance over properties owned by named CS members in the Hamblin Victims’ Statements reveals an overwhelming presence throughout the Edgemont wards and stakes over the years. The Roney family’s own property records show a staggering accumulation of properties in those same neighborhoods beginning with Nu Skin International’s emergence in the late Eighties and early Nineties.
The Roney Family’s Ascendance via Nu Skin
The emergence of the Roney family began in the Eighties, when Blake Roney, then a newly minted graduate of BYU, was looking for an opportunity to start his own business. His sister, Nedra Dee Anderson, had the idea of making skin care that was ostensibly filler free. The mythology of their company, Nu Skin, omits certain key facts about the company’s infancy. Roney supposedly started Nu Skin with $5,000, alongside his sister Nedra and her friend Sandie Tillotson, as well as Steven J Lund.
In June 1984, Nu Skin International was founded by the four would be entrepreneurs, and by October 15, 1984, Nu Skin International would be incorporated. Tillotson was reportedly already a multi-millionaire owing to her success with the Cambridge Diet Plan (CDP), an MLM company. A lawsuit filed against Nu Skin by a disgruntled distributor accused Tillotson and Nu Skin distributor Clara McDermott of designing Nu Skin as a clone of the Cambridge Diet Plan’s MLM model. McDermott and Tillotson were Cambridge distributors, and both had made significant amounts of money with the CDP.
McDermott’s son Craig had married Sandie Tillotson, who had left her job as a teacher in 1980 to plug Cambridge, and she had made a fortune at her new gig. Cambridge had gone into bankruptcy, and Tillotson needed a new company to ply her trade at. By founding Nu Skin with Blake Roney, Nedra Dee Anderson, and Steven Lund, Tillotson managed to establish her soft landing.
She brought along others from CDP as well. The official Nu Skin origin story tells of Roney, Anderson, Lund, and Tillotson receiving the company’s product from a supplier in either Arizona or Texas, delivered in ten gallon containers, from which the plucky entrepreneurs would spoon out customer orders into whatever receptacle customers would bring by Nedra Anderson’s basement. As Nu Skin’s business began to explode, Nedra Anderson began to display serious behavioral issues and signs of addiction. Her cofounders began trying to keep her out of the office, hiding her from clients and distributors alike.
Tillotson’s own marriage was failing, due to her reported propensities for extramarital affairs. Her husband reportedly acquiesced, playing along with Tillotson’s appetite for cuckoldry, until he realized that he too could leverage his newfound wealth into his own affairs with the wives of his friends. The money kept pouring in, even as two of the co-founders were falling apart.
Nu Skin was also facing increasing regulatory and legal scrutiny, as attorney generals and the FTC began taking a hard look at its business practices and the claims it made about the products its sold. On average, only 13% of distributors were making monthly commission checks, and most of those distributors were making under $200 a month. After they deducted their expenses, the distributors were losing money.
This led to civil suits by angry former distributors who alleged that Nu Skin had lied about its business practices and its commission structures, and the distributors’ earning potential. Nu Skin paid fines, agreed to refund the products purchased by distributors who had purchased inventory to salvage their eligibility for commission. The truth was that Nu Skin didn’t sell to customers, because customers weren’t interested in paying for Nu Skin’s products. Nu Skin only sold to its distributors, who found themselves unable to sell those products to anyone outside of their newly recruited downlines.
Nu Skin’s malfeasance was not confined to hoodwinking distributors; in fact, Nu Skin faced litigation centered on the propensity of its distributors to pilfer downlines from other Nu Skin distributors. One such case involved Don Lasko, who had successfully risen in the ranks of Nu Skin distributors after joining the company in 1989. By 1993, Lasko filed a federal lawsuit against Nathan Ricks, Scott Tillotson, NS Group, Clara McDermott, Danny White, and Kyle M. Wright. Lasko alleged that the defendants had solicited distributors under his group to sever ties with him and join up with the defendants.
McDermott sought to have Lasko’s case brought under the auspices of an earlier settlement agreement with plaintiffs in California, but her efforts were unsuccessful.
Ricks was the brother in law of Scott Tillotson, who was Clara McDermott’s son. The Tillotson family was headed by Clara McDermott, who had all of her children by her first husband before marrying James Lewis McDermott, a retired Air Force Major in 1975. The Tillotsons had been enmeshed in the Cambridge Diet Plan before the company folded, and they were the ones who gave Nu Skin its MLM structure and organization.
In April 1994, the Federal Trade Commission turned its eyes towards the Tillotson family, alleging that Nu Skin International, Inc., Clara McDermott, Craig Tillotson, Craig bryson, and their companies CJM, Inc.; CST Management, Inc.; and CK&C, Inc. were engaged in violations of the Federal Trade Commission Act. The FTC found that Nu Skin’s products did not work as advertised, and that Nu Skin had lied about earning potential from distributorships in order to recruit.
The FTC stated that Nu Skin had no reasonable basis to make specific claims about the efficacy of its products on hair loss or skin regeneration, and therefore Nu Skin was engaged in deceptive marketing practices. This deceit extended to Nu Skin’s advertisments on earning potential as well. In plain English, Nu Skin lied.
Throughout its history, Nu Skin was forced to buy back or refund distributors for the unsold inventory of products they’d accumulated in the hopes of becoming the next Blake Roney or Sandie Tillotson. As America became too hot of a marketplace due to regulators and lawsuits, Nu Skin looked abroad to Asia. Even though countries like China had strict laws against pyramid schemes, Nu Skin had a weapon in its arsenal: Jon Huntsman, Jr.
Huntsman’s former chief of staff, Jason Chaffetz, had landed at Nu Skin after being fired by the governor. The relationship between Chaffetz and Huntsman might have been difficult, but Nu Skin’s millions were an elixir to any politician with aspirations for higher office. Huntsman had his eyes on bigger and brighter prizes than the governor’s mansion, and his fluent Mandarin and long-established relationships within the Chinese Communist Party were leveraged by Nu Skin to pave the way for their entry into the Chinese marketplace.
From time to time, Nu Skin ran afoul of Chinese regulators, but their relationships with men like Huntsman and his network kept Nu Skin from serious trouble. Nu Skin’s relationship with longtime Utah Senator Orrin Hatch paid serious dividends when Hatch authored the Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act (DSHEA) in 1994. Due to DSHEA, Nu Skin could make health products and dietary supplements while bypassing FDA review. As a result of Hatch’s legislation, supplements were no longer classified as drugs, and manufacturers had no obligation to disclose the contents to the FDA or pay for testing on the supplements’ safety or efficacy.
Nu Skin collected other politicians as well, most notably Mitt Romney. When Romney was trying to salvage the Salt Lake City Olympics, which had gone deeply into debt, Nu Skin’s founders stepped forward with a reported $20 million donation from their personal funds. Nu Skin didn’t have $20 million, because its founders and distributors had siphoned off virtually every dime of the company’s revenues.
The relationship with Romney would provide Nu Skin executive Steven Lund with a bit of embarrassment, as it was revealed that he had funneled two million dollars in PAC contributions to Romney through two companies, F8 and Eli Publishing, with both companies listing Lund and his son in law as their contacts. Neither company sold any products, or had any revenues. Both were established to contributed $2 million to Mitt Romney’s PACs while hiding the sources of the money. The problem for Lund was that PAC donors have to declare their identity, and hiding the source of PAC donations is illegal.
Additionally, to believe Lund contributed the $2 million, you’d have to believe he gave $2 million out off his $31.9 million fortune in Nu Skin stock to Mitt Romney. Lund had sold a total of $61.7 million in stock from 2007 to 2023. A review of the stock sales of Nu Skin insiders like Lund reveals that they fortuitously time their stock sales. The stock always dips in value post-sale, usually be over 14%. Lund and the other Nu Skin insiders don’t buy Nu Skin’s stock with any regularity. Instead, they receive gifts of the stock, which they dump before the company’s share price decreases.
Nu Skin’s revenues originate primarily from Asia, with the U.S. accounting for barely 10% of its revenues. Its reported revenues provide insight into its operations beyond cosmetics, which a later section will examine.
The truth of Nu Skin is that it was built on lies from the beginning. Many of its early distributors and founders were already substantially wealthy when they established Nu Skin. In order to keep their wealth and build their fortunes going forward, those individuals needed to establish another MLM company to replace the imploded Cambridge Diet Plan. In order to do that, the founders of Nu Skin needed to avoid regulatory and legal scrutiny of their operations, and they invested some of their newfound wealth
All great lies are rooted in some scintilla of the truth, because most liars lack the imagination to fabricate a lie ex nihilo. Liars stick with what they know, and they have an innate need to confess their deception, if only to brag. Sandie Tillotson was no different. When her marriage to Craig Tillotson fell apart, her newly found fortune was cut in half. The Tillotsons did not have a prenuptial agreement, and Sandie Tillotson learned her lesson from her first divorce.
The Education of Sandie Neaman
Sandie Neaman was a typical Long Island girl born to Charles Neaman, a man who had served as an LDS bishop. Sandie was one of four daughters, in a house with five children. Her brother Charles went on to become a master carpenter, eventually serving as a foreman at Leadbetter Ranch for Craig Tillotson, his brother in law.
Neaman would become Sandie Tillotson, the multimillionaire Cambridge Diet Plan disributor who went on to become a co-foudner of Nu Skin. She also went on to three marriages, first to her fellow Cambridge Diet Plan distributor spouse Craig Tillotson, himself the son of Clara McDermott. As Sandie Tillotson’s wealth grew, so did her appetites.
According to Tillotson’s third husband Adam Baker, who she met at a strip club named Raskal’s dancing under the name “Dirty Dalton,” Tilltson claimed that she had purchased a Camaro in high school with money she earned while working as a 15 year old stripper. That job evolved into child prostitution, as strip club patrons paid top dollar to have sex wtih Sandie Neaman. Neaman also allegedly told Baker that she had been gang raped in the back of a van after defying her father’s command to stay home.
When she was dumped out of the back of the van, she went home and tearfully told her mother what had happened. According to Baker, Sandie’s parents blamed her for the sexual assault due to her disobedience. Her assailants were never prosecuted, and her family never filed a police report. As the daugher of an LDS bishop, Sandie Neaman found out what scores of child sexual abuse victims knew: the LDS had a cultural propensity for blaming victims, and an indifference to holding their assailants accountable.
The warped lessons of her youth accompanied Neaman into adulthood, where she found fertile ground in Utah for the MLM industry, in a state with over 100 MLM companies. Utah’s cultural can do attitude and deeply ingrained belief in personal responsibility was a perfect combination for the MLM companies that sprung up everywhere in the Eighties and Nineties. Most Latter Day Saints were accustomed to knocking on doors and hearing the word no as missionaries; therefore, going door to door and being rejected was something the average Saint was immune from in terms of discouragement. The tendency of Latter Day Saints to blame themselves before anyone else, regardless of the context or the circumstances, played perfectly with the MLM approach of indoctrinating would-be entrepreneurs with the idea that their success-or lack thereof-was entirely their responsiblity or fault.
A woman who purportedly had been told that her childhood gang rape was her fault for going out instead of following her father’s command to stay home would have zero issue reinforcing the same attitude on distributors who questioned why they weren’t able to sell whatever quackery Cambridge and Nu Skin were shilling. If your faith was wavering, the answer was to double down and believe even harder. Sandie Tillotson had parlayed her side gig at Cambridge into a path out of a low paying teaching job, into a life of wealth and privilege. When Cambridge imploded, Tillotson wasn’t deterred. She simply started her own MLM enterprise with her mother in law, Blake Roney and his sister Nedra, and Steve Lund.
This time, her company would be competently managed, with expenditures never getting in the way of the company’s survival. Cambridge had imploded under the lavish spending of its executives and management. Nu Skin would begin in Nedra Anderson’s basement, one ten gallon container of product at a time, with the plucky foursome shoveling product in the containers their first customers brought with them. Sandie Tilltson’s mother in law had built Cambridge’s distributorship, and Clara McDermott built Nu Skin’s processes and methods with ruthless efficiency.
The story told by Adam Baker as to how Nu Skin came to get its product manufactured detailed the ruthless determination of Nu Skin’s female founders to succeed by any means necessary. Nedra Anderson had found a supplier to provide the product, but her coup de grace was securing an agreement to delay billing 90 days after delivery. This way, Nu Skin’s founders and their distributors could sell the product first, and then pay the invoices. The way Nedra Anderson allegedly secured this agreement was simple: she slept with the supplier. Tillotson allegedly told this story to Adam Baker while laughing about the name given to Nedra and Sandie’s ability to secure business concessions with sex: net 90 pussy.
Tillotson believed in success, and to the extent that her LDS faith could be used to market her company as credible, she’d leverage it. Behind the scenes, according to Baker, Tillotson had cheated on her husband Craig throughout their marriage. When Craig became aware, he chose to play along, participating in cuckoldry and eventually graduating to his own infidelities as he used his newfound wealth to pursue the wives of his friends. Wealth wasn’t corrupting, but it did make it possible for a former schoolteacher to indulge whatever proclivities had previously been held in check by lesser means.
The Tillotsons had it all: money, the reputation that came with it as purportedly self-made success stories, and sex. Sandie Tillotson wasn’t simply interested in the MLM game; she had her eyes on making her money work for her. According to Baker, she took her money from Nu-Skin and loaned it out at above market rates of interest to local developers. The problem Tillotson faced was simple: her marriage was falling apart, and her husband had an equal claim on the marital estate. When the Tillotsons finally divorced, Craig Tillotson took half of what they made together.
Sandie Tillotson learned her lesson. She got prenuptial agreements for future marriages. First, she married a Dutch B-movie actor named Diederik van Nederveen, who had acted sporadically and modeled. Tillotson met Van Nederveen at Club Med in Cancun during a Nu Skin jaunt, and Blake Roney had officiated their wedding. He was a trophy husband, younger than Tillotson and entirely willing to play the part. It was an easy part to play, as Tillotson lavished Van Nederveen and his successor Adam “Dirty Dalton” Baker with fast cars and lavish spending sprees.
Van Nederveen had a daughter with Tillotson, and their divorce was notable for the outcome: even though Tillotson was worth in excess of $100 million, van Nederveen received $1.4 million and $5,000 a month in child support. Van Nederveen reportedly signed away his custody rights for $350,000 in 2005, but somehow retained visitation rights. It was a dispute over visitation that led to van Nederveen seeking to write a book detailing his time as Tillotson’s husband.
Van Nederveen published draft chapters of the book on his website, alleging that Tillotson had engaged in drug trafficking with her private jets, a claim corroborated by Tillotson’s third husband Adam Baker, who alleged that he had found a kilo of heroin at the bottom of a gift bag Tillotson had him deliver to one of her friends. Tillotson’s response was to sue van Nederveen for $60 million and use Judge L.A. Dever to suppress her ex-husband’s book by getting a court order barring van Nederveen from publishing his claims. When van Nederveen’s attorneys threatened to appeal to the Utah Supreme Court, Judge Dever was forced to narrow his original court order because it violated van Nederveen’s First Amendment rights.
Tillotson was desperate to keep the claims out of the public eye, and Judge Dever was willing to comply. The case proceedings and records were sealed by Judge Dever, but not before Nu Skin’s stock price fell by a third. Van Nederveen attacked Nu Skin as a pyramid scheme engaged in fraud, in addition to alleging that Tillotson had engaged in drug trafficking. Tillotson’s third ex-husband, the former stripper Adam Baker, alleged that Tillotson had molested two underage boys in New York and that she had molested his oldest son. This would place Tillotson squarely in the ranks of the 34% of child sexual abuse offenders who become perpetrators. As a result of her ex-husbands’ allegations, Tillotson had to step down from her board position at Nu Skin, even though she retained her status as the company’s largest shareholder.
Baker further alleged that Tillotson was pocketing the $1,200 sign up payment for Nu Skin distributors who purchased starter kits, and those cash payments were carried in bags to Tillotson’s private jet, and then flown to the Cayman Islands. Baker claimed that Tillotson had explicitly told him she was flying the cash abroad to avoid paying taxes on it in the United States. If true, this would implicate Tillotson in tax evasion.
The truth was that Tillotson’s claims strained credulity. Nu Skin wasn’t generating bags of cash from newly signed distributors, because 90% of revenues came from overseas. Only a select few distributors made any significant money from Nu Skin, and this had made recruitment difficult in the United States. The alternative explanation, which was that Tillotson had a cash business generating vast sums of untaxed income from the sale of narcotics, seemed more plausible.
Over the course of their marriage, Baker claimed that Tillotson had purchased dozens of sports cars for him, as well as multiple jets and a ranch. This was in addition to regular lavish spending sprees and Tillotson’s provision of a no-limit credit card that Baker would use to buy six figure sports cars. As of 2023, Tillotson’s 3,145,845 shares of Nu Skin Enterprises Inc stock was worth $122 million.
It is possible that Tillotson could have paid the upkeep and taxes on her vast real estate and personal property holdings with her Nu Skin earnings alone, but the spending sprees detailed by Baker and others would have required vast sums of money that presumably would have required Tillotson to sell her stock. Tillotson has not sold Nu Skin stock since 2012, according to her SEC Form 4 filings. Before 2012, she had sold a reported $65 million in stock. At least 15% of her sales would have been taken by individual capital gains taxes.
Adam Baker insisted in his memoir that Tillotson was a billionaire, even entitling his memoir of his marriage with Tillotson Formerly Filthy Rich-My Scandalous Life with a Billionaire Cougar.
In the end, Baker received his own education: the court in his divorce sacked him with the attorney’s fees and court costs for his multi-millionaire wife, whic led to his effort to publish his memoirs. All that Baker had left after his marriage and divorce from Sandie Tillotson was a story, one soaked in sex and corruption. Blake Roney, the stalwart Latter Day Saint who accumulated a reported $600 million fortune on his way to a five year calling as an Area Seventy, with higher callings likely in his future, looked the other way as Sandie Tillotson and his sister Nedra lived wild lives fueled by their Nu Skin fortunes.
Nedra Roney had flamed out faster than anyone else in Nu Skin’s origin story. By 1995, she was out of the company, having descended into a spiral of addiction and instability that saw her lose custody of one child while two others were placed in protective custody.
Nedra Roney’s Descent
In April 2013, Nedra Roney’s life came to yet another crisis in a life that seemed marked by a never ending series of crises. Her husband, Robert Clark McKell, was a arrested on two counts of object rape, one count for forcible sodomy, and four counts of sexual battery. The victim was her 18 year old adopted daughter, Summer McKell, one of seven adopted children that Nedra had along with her one biological child, her son Brooke Alin Roney.
In the late Eighties, Nedra’s problems with substance abuse had become an ongoing issue at Nu Skin’s offices. Each day, the other co-founders navigated around Nedra, seeking to keep employees and investors away from her due to her erratic behavior and obvious intoxication. Eventually, Nedra left the company altogether, her life imploding in the process. This culminated in her arrest for prescription drug and insurance fraud, which was compounded by DFS stripping her of custody of one child while placing two other children in protective custody.
The Roney home was choatic, even after Roney’s thirteenth-and longest lasting-marriage to Robert McKell, a man with five grown children of his own. McKell adopted Roney’s children, taking on the role of father. Two of Nedra Roney’s children had been institutionalized, and others had been placed in proctor homes owing to issues with violence. One of Nedra’s children, River Roney McKell, allegedly sexually assaulted his younger female sibling while another sibling held the victim down.
What is unclear is how Nedra Roney managed to adopt additional children after her conviction for prescription and drug fraud in the Nineties, and the removal of children from her home by DFS. Somehow Nedra Roney was able to continue to accumulate adopted children, along with a seemingly never ending array of husbands, with many of her marriages ending in annulments.
One of those adopted children was Summer McKell, a young girl born in Russia to a mother who had died during childbirth. Summer had a variety of cognitive and physical issues, including perinatal encephalopathy, hypertension syndrome, and movement disorders. As a result of these issues, Summer was developmentally disabled. Court filings described a young woman who would “conform to established power dynamics” with “profound difficulties in seeking out and processing information on her own.” Summer McKell’s developmental disabilities extended to her academic performance, inhibiting her ability to read or remember information.
As such, Summer’s “impairments [made] her suscepitble to influence and suggestions, and particularly vulnerable to manipulation and abuse.”
When Nedra Roney married Robert C. McKell in 2007, she married a man who had previously been charged with third degree felony assault in 2003. McKell pleaded down to a misdemeanor, receiving community service and probation that terminated in 2007. As Summer matured, the court filings alleged that her new adoptive father took an especial interest in her, driving her to school and talking to her about her breast and her bra on the car ride. McKell allegedly demanded that his daughter remove her bra in the car so that he could see if it was padded.
According to the court filings, McKell secretly purchased clothes and gifts for Summer, and continually made comments of a sexual nature about her appearance. He restricted her social life, even as he permitted her siblings to participate in school activities. When Summer’s school counselors recommended a psychological evaluation to identify the issues her birth injuries had caused in the form of developmental disabilities, McKell allegedly utilized the evaluation’s findings to better manipulate his daughter.
In November 2012, Summer turned 18, and Robert McKell escalated his behavior by sexually touching Summer without her consent. Two months after her birthday, Robert and Nedra sought a court order to be jointly appointed as Summer’s co-guardians and conservators. The stories vary, but one version alleged that Robert and Nedra had made their daughter’s continued residency in their home contingent on her agreement to a conservatorship.
On February 15, 2013, despite the fact that her father had a prior conviction for assault and her mother had a prior conviction related to prescription drug fraud and insurance fraud, along with the ongoing issues with adopted children in the McKell household, the court granted Robert and Nedra’s petition and appointed them as Summer’s conservators. Robert McKell then took Summer on a trip to the family home in Hawaii, where he gave her marijuana and followed her into a her room, where he lifted her shirt and bit her nipple. When Summer began to cry, Robert McKell left the room.
When they returned to the family’s home in Utah, Robert McKell told Summer she could check her social media on his phone if he could lie down in the bed next to her. He began touching her underneath of her clothing, and when she told him not to, he continued to touch her underneath her underwear and digitally penetrated her vagina.
Later that year, while Nedra McKell was at a hotel recovering from a medical procedure, Robert McKell gave Summer rum and cokes. When she passed out, she awoke to find her stepfather performing oral sex on her. This resulted in behavioral issues as Summer lashed out, which gave McKell further excuse to exert control over her through the conservatorship.
When Summer went into the bathroom to grab a hair dryer one Sunday, Robert McKell was in the shower. He made his daughter get in with him, and wash his back. Robert McKell then washed her hair. Robert McKell then climbed out of the shower, dried off, finished getting ready, and went to church.
In March 2013, Summer told her brother Brooke and his girlfriend about the abuse, and Brooke Roney took his sister to the police. What followed was a series of events that compounded Summer McKell’s dilemna. Her abuser was her conservator with legeal power over every aspect of her life. Her abuser’s wife was her other conservator, and her adoptive mother. Robert McKell proceeded to get a protective order against Brooke Roney in his capacity as Summer’s conservator, barring Brooke from contacting his sister.
His wife and his children from his prior marriage participated in an effort to isolate Summer McKell, moving her to his son Robert T. McKell’s home in Springville, Utah. Robert T. McKell put his adopted sister in the unfinished basement of his home, with no working shower or telephone or Internet access. The door to the upstairs level of the house was locked to prevent Summer McKell from leaving the basement and to keep her from accessing a phone. Robert told his sister that she couldn’t go to church because the church was his his father’s church, and due to the protective order, she couldn’t attend church with her father present.
This was used as a cudgel to try and bully Summer McKell into recanting her allegations. Nedra McKell told her daughter that unless she recanted, she would be unable to see her friends and family. Robert and Nedra McKell relocated Summer to different houses to keep victims rights advocates from conducting in person appointments, which led to her advocate eventually securing a court order mandating Summer’s availability for appointments.
In December 2013, the Utah County Sheriff’s Department finally took Summer McKell away from Robert and Nedra McKell, and she was located with her sister Michelle Tischner, who became her guardian in October 2017. Robert McKell then allegedly sent private investigators and others to follow Summer McKell wherever she went while his criminal case played out.
In addition, Robert and Nedra apparently hired an Oregon online publication, the U.S. Observer, to write about his criminal case. According to court filings n Robert McKell’s criminal case, in late April or May of 2014, an article was circulated in Utah County via the USPS. The article reached an estimated 21 percent of the population of Utah County, and it contained possible HIPAA violations due to its disclosure of private medical information.
The article originated via an online publication, the US Observer, and was written by Ron Lee, an investigative journalist who had previously worked as a barista at Dutch Brothers in Oregon. The US Observer advertises itself as an online publication that can be retained to write exposes of false criminal allegations, and it seems to focus almost exclusively on purportedly false sex crimes allegations.
Ron Lee’s article introduced Nedra Roney as the cofounder of Nu Skin Enterprises, who had “expanded her family beyond her one natural son, Brooke, by adopting 7 children from around the world.” Nedra had “finally…found a man she could make a permanent home with, for herself and her whole family-Rob McKell.” No mention was made of Nedra’s prior issues with prescription drug and insurance fraud, or her 13 marriages, or the fact that she had previously lost custody of one of her children due to abuse and neglect allegations and an overdose that left her hospitalized.
Robert McKell was given space Lee’s article to explain why he was facing charges that he sexually abused his daughter, claiming that he “grew up learning hard work and sacrifice,” and that Nedra had “doted on and spoiled” her eight children. According to McKell, “[i]t was no surprise that [the children] resented my new place in their lives and in Nedra’s heart.”
The article went on to lay bare the issues of the adopted children of Nedra Roney, accusing them of “troubles ranging from lying and violence to sexual promiscuity and abuse, two of the children found themselves in treatment programs and proctor homes because they became such a threat to the safety of the rest of the family.” The article told of family members who recounted one of the adopted boy’s conviction for sexually abusing a younger sibling.
Lee wrote that “Rob and Nedra tried everything they could to protect their children,” which strains credulity given that by their own admission, their home was a place where at least one sibling had molested another sibling, and where multiple children had been placed in treatment programs and proctor homes. Additionally, given that Nedra Roney had lost custody of one of her children owing to her own history with drug abuse, Lee’s hagiographic article whitewashed the reality of the McKell household in order to sanitize Robert and Nedra’s role in their children’s issues.
The article then outed Summer McKell as Robert McKell’s accuser, and her photograph was included. Summer McKell was allegedly born in Siberia, and purportedly suffered from attachment disorder according to Nedra. Worse yet, Ron Lee was able to quote Summer McKell’s clinical psychologist Randy Hyde, who was quoted as saying that Summer McKell “likely has a “thought disorder” and is “blatantly paranoid.” Hyde was further quoted as stating that Summer scored as a “runaway delinquent” and “with similar profiles there is a probable history of antisocial behavior, such as promiscuity and deserting their family,” with “sexual acting out” as “probable” for Summer.
In simple terms, Ron Lee was able to access Hyde’s reports on Summer either directly through Hyde or through Nedra and Robert McKell, and he published her private medical information and the loose diagnoses of Randy Hyde in his article, which was then printed up and mailed to over a million people in Utah County, where Robert McKell was facing criminal charges for abusing Summer McKell. Someone paid the US Observer to write up the article, provided Summer McKell’s confidential medical information to the US Observer and Ron Lee, and then paid for the printing costs and postage to mail Ron Lee’s article to over a million Utah County residents, who would have been drawn from in a jury pool for Robert McKell’s trial.
The article went on to detail Summer McKell’s alleged sexual behavior during high school, including allegations that she had sent nude pictures and videos to various males, “young and aged.” The McKells had approached Summer McKell with their demand that she consent to a conservatorship upon her 18th birthday, which Ron Lee notes was during the time Robert McKell was allegedly abusing her. The McKells and Ron Lee state on the one hand that Summer McKell lacked the wherewithal to manage her own affairs to such a degree that she needed her parents to establish a conservatorship, but they also allege that she was competent enough to consent to that conservatorship and cite affidavits from her conservatorship hearing to support that position.
Additionally, Robert and Nedra McKell stated that Summer’s allegations against her father stemmed from her complicity in River Roney McKell’s sexual assault of a younger sibling, alleging that Summer held the door closed while River molested the younger sibling “in a strikingly similar manner to to the claims Summer has leveled at Rob.” Randy Hyde’s profile of Summer is cited again, stating that “it is probable she is exaggerating her symptoms” and “given all that she alleges to have gone through…it is interesting that Summer is experiencing, at best mild anxiety and depression.”
Lee and the McKells never bothered to offer specifics as to what exactly Summer was claiming she had gone through to Randy Hyde. Lee’s article then goes on to blame Victim’s Advocates Maria Blanchard and Brianne Wilkes for manipulating her into accusing her mother Nedra of retaliation, intentional abuse and neglect of a vulnerable adult, and violation of a protective order.” At the time of the visit between Summer McKell and Blanchard and Wilkes, Summer was living with Robert McKell’s son.
What Lee never bothered to disclose in any of his articles was the fact that Nedra Roney McKell pleaded no contest to the allegations.
In Lee’s words, the case against Rob McKell was a joke.
Rob McKell went on to plead guilty to lesser charges of misdemeanor sexual battery, for which he served a year in jail and 36 months probation. In his proffer, McKell admitted that he “touched the woman’s buttocks or breasts in a way that he knew or “should have known might cause affront or harm.” Initially, Robert McKell denied any and all sexual contact with his daughter, but after four years of spreading her private medical information online and via the mail, as well as leaking allegations about her sexual behavior as a teenager, he pleaded guilty to touching her breasts or buttocks.
Robert McKell is now a registered sex offender in Utah.
Michelle Tischner, who was Summer McKell’s older sister, took as guardian and conservator of Summer, and sued Robert McKell in April 2021 for assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligence. The complaint was later amended to include breach of fiduciary duty and civil conspiracy, as well as declaratory judgment.
Due to the fact that Summer McKell had not filed within four years of her 18th birthday her lawsuit against Robert McKell was thrown out, even though it was undisputed that she had severe cognitive and development issues that prevented her from managing her own affairs. Judge Brady ruled that the lawsuit was filed 133 days past the four year deadline.
These allegations place the Roney family and its associate, Nu Skin cofounder Sandie Tillotson, squarely in at least five separate alleged instances of child sexual abuse. Tillotson was alleged to have molested at least three minor males, two in New York and another Utah. Robert McKell, the thirteenth husband of Nu Skin cofounder Nedra Roney, was convicted of misdemeanor sexual battery against his daughter Summer. Summer’s brother River Roney McKell is allegedly the minor perpetrator of a sexual assault against one of his younger female siblings, with varying accounts placing Summer McKell either in the room holding the door closed or on the bed holding the victim down during the assault.
The Roney fortune was used to fund a massive public relations blitz against Summer Roney McKell, an 18 year old victim of sexual abuse in both Utah and Hawaii at the hands of her adoptive father. The expenditure lavished on the US Observer campaign led to a motion for a change of venue, and various delays in the prosecution of Robert McKell. The Roneys were permitted to shuttle Summer to various family members’ homes, isolating her from supportive family and friends during the prosecution.
In order to save Robert McKell from a conviction on his original charges, Nedra Roney and her husband were willing to air out their children’s trauma and abuse, including Summer’s history as a Siberian orphan and mentally ill and developmentally disabled child. Nedra showed no hesitation in airing out the sexual abuse of a second child, which allegedly took place at the hands of her son River Roney McKell with Summer allegedly assisting him in the assault. She also was willing to disclose the institutionalization of two other adopted children in order to exculpate her husband in the criminal case resulting from his abuse of her daughter.
The picture that emerges out of these facts is of a woman who fits the pattern of multi generational abuse. Nedra Roney had 13 marriages, most of which ended in either divorce or annulment. She had ongoing issues with drug addiction severe enough to lead to her departure from Nu Skin and the removal of a child from her custody, with two other children being placed under protective custody by DFS after she overdosed. She married Robert McKell, a man with a prior criminal record for assault, who went on to abuse her daughter Summer.
Conclusion
Nu Skin funded the ascendancy of the Roney family, and it continued the ongoing ascent of the Tillotsons, who faced losing their wealth and momentum with Cambridge Diet Plan’s implosion. Money leaves a trail, as do the deeds of individuals and families. Through news articles, court filings, and regulatory filings and disclosures, as well as property records, IRA has been able to piece together where the Nu Skin money went. In the Roney family’s case, it went to purchase scores of properties in the neighborhoods, wards, and stakes where the alleged CS members in the Hamblin Victims Statements were clustered. Part II will examine those properties, and the Roney family’s possible fit within the CS.
The picture painted by the facts is of a family whose defined and divided by wealth, with Nedra McKell’s Last Will and Testament naming several brothers as individuals who would never be guardians or conservators of her children. That family also had at least one direct connection to alleged CS matriarch Carma de Jong Anderson, whose fellow ward member, second councilor Britton Roney spoke at her funeral and directed the proceedings.
The Hamblin Victims Statements explicitly state that the CS looked for wealth in prospective members, because that wealth could be used to fund the operations and activities of the CS. The Roneys of the late Eighties and early Nineties would have been up and coming in the Provo area, right when CS princeling David Lee Hamblin was beginning his ascent within the Provo and Spring City CS councils. They would have made fine candidates for the CS, with their newfound wealth and status, and their membership within the LDS.
What a total & complete dumpster fire! I’ve been inside some of the houses in this neighborhood, as Hamblin referred me to a female “healer” for help in 2013. The female healer lived in one of these homes in the “tree streets” neighborhood of Provo. This woman had an adopted daughter, too! It’s getting clearer and clearer, thanks to your work Go El. Thank you!!
Wow! and Wow! Amazing work! Your writing is certainly entertaining. But what a despicable, real-life story for each of us to read and shudder. This thread or set of seams just keeps unraveling...I dare say this emperor will soon have no clothes. Pity.