Margie and John Cantrell had a long history of caring for foster kids when they moved in 2004 from California to Mineola, Texas. Thus, taking in 7-year-old Shelby, 6-year-old Hunter, and 4-year-old Carly—siblings who had been in the system after being removed from their drug-abusing parents—was par for the course. What wasn’t customary was what came next.
With Margie by their side, the three kids confessed to a Texas Ranger that they’d been forced into X-rated work by their mom and dad at a local swingers’ club (and a training facility referred to as a “sex kindergarten”) that had already drawn the ire of residents in this deeply religious hamlet. The ensuing trials were front-page news and concluded with four life-sentence convictions, as well as multiple families and reputations in tatters.
And, as How to Create a Sex Scandal’s title implies, it was all a lie.
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Premiering on the newly christened Max on May 23 (and featuring commercial breaks and 44-minute runtimes that suggest it was originally headed for Discovery+), directors Julian P. Hobbs and Berndt Mader’s three-part docuseries is a jaw-dropping account of insane accusations, rigged prosecutions, and unjust outcomes—not to mention immoral child abuse, albeit not the kind that’s initially alleged. Boasting interviews with just about everyone involved in this sordid affair—including Margie, Hunter, Carly, their cousin Gabby, and some of the parents whom they were coerced into putting behind bars—it’s a tale of manipulation and avarice, colored by the sort of right-wing paranoia that’s now a common fixture in today’s conservative quarters.
Resonating as a precursor to the pedophilic-sex-ring hysteria that’s gripped much of the QAnon/MAGA right (minus the Pizzagate absurdity), How to Create a Sex Scandal is driven at first by the commentary of Margie, who sweetly talks about her Christian faith and her devotion to the dozens of foster kids that she and her Santa Claus-resembling husband John brought into their homes over the years. When they relocated to a beautiful lake house in Mineola, they added Shelby, Hunter, and Carly to their ever-burgeoning brood. Having been taken by Child Protective Services from their parents Shauntel and Jamie Mayo due to narcotics-related neglect, the three kids originally found their new environs peaceful and inviting. Yet everything changed when Margie—feeling the strain of having nine children in one house—began considering the purchase of a separate facility where her charges could more comfortably live.
Patrick Kelly and his son.
Lee Phelan/MaxThe building she chose, it turned out, had recently been a swingers’ club that was not welcomed with open arms by this Bible-thumping community. Upon visiting it with Shelby, Hunter, and Carly, Margie says she was stunned to hear that they were intimately familiar with the place. Moreover, they had stories to tell—and tell them they did, not only to her but to Texas Ranger Philip Kemp. In the many interrogation-room videos presented by How to Create a Sex Scandal, the young siblings, with Margie sitting beside them, are coaxed into discussing how their mom Shauntel and dad Jamie took them to the club to dance and perform sex acts, all of which they’d previously been groomed to do at a “sex kindergarten” located at the trailer of Shauntel and Jamie’s friend Patrick “Booger Red” Kelly.
This was sensational stuff, and it was eventually corroborated by the kids’ cousin Gabby, who also implicated her mom Sheila and dad Jimmy in this monstrous enterprise. Another friend, Dennis Pittman, was additionally blamed for these offenses, and even though prosecutors in Wood County (in which Mineola resides) determined that there wasn’t enough evidence to bring charges, Margie convinced neighboring Smith County DA Matt Bingham to indict Shauntel, Jamie, Patrick, Dennis, Sheila, and Jimmy. For the first four, guilty verdicts came swiftly courtesy of Judge Jack Skeen, a jury pool that had been prejudiced by negative media coverage of the case, and the testimony of the kids themselves, who repeated their claims on the stand to a shocked public.
Based on Texas Monthly articles written by executive editor Michael Hall (who appears throughout), How to Create a Sex Scandal reveals that when it came time to prosecute Sheila and Jimmy, the district attorney opted to cut plea deals and set them free. In short order, Shauntel, Jamie, and Patrick’s convictions were overturned on the basis of “numerous evidentiary errors,” including Skeen’s biased management of the trials. Before long, the kids were recanting their statements, and in Hobbs and Mader’s docuseries, they (and their parents) are blunt about their feelings for Margie, whom they dub a “monster” and “puppet master.” Faced with this turn of events, as well as charges that they had physically abused their foster kids, Margie and John bolted back to California. Still, on camera, Margie remains steadfast that she told the truth about the pedophilic sex ring—and contends that Shelby’s refusal to recant corroborates her tale.
How to Create a Sex Scandal persuasively argues that class divides had much to do with Margie’s successful vilification of Shauntel, Jamie, and company, whose trailer-park lives and appearances made them seem inherently low and, therefore, capable of ugly atrocities. Mostly, however, it’s a case study about how easy it is to manipulate both children into saying whatever you want, and devout adults who are eager to see demonic corruption and sin around every corner (especially when there’s an actual swinger’s club nearby). There was never any legitimate reason to believe that these horrors were taking place save for the declarations of under-10-year-old children, since no corroborating evidence of any kind was ever discovered. And upon watching videos of their confessions, it’s so obvious that the children were coached by Margie and Kemp that the only real explanation for grown-ups buying their stories hook, line, and sinker is that a blind holier-than-thou agenda was at play.
If that weren’t disheartening enough, though, How to Create a Sex Scandal then addresses the question why Margie went through all this trouble in the first place with the most depressing answer imaginable: money. Which just serves as a reminder: When greed and God get together, look out.
