By the conclusion of the twentieth century and now in the twenty-first century, the damage done by destructive cults has become increasingly evident. Collective awareness about them has largely increased through media reports, criminal arrests, and court trials.
Groups called “cults” often fit a particular pattern, which may include a seemingly encapsulated or cocooned state of being. In this sense the people in cults appear to function within their own alternate reality. But when that alternate reality comes into conflict with mainstream society, some groups have imploded or exploded. The occurrence of such tragic events brings into sharp focus what Dr. Bruce Perry calls “the fracture lines in our culture.”235
CHAPTER 2
SMALL BUT DEADLY
Most of the destructive cults reported about around the world are actually quite small, often with less than one hundred members. Nevertheless, these small groups have greatly contributed to the history of cult tragedies. Unlike the larger organizations or movements, these smaller groups are typically very tightly wound around an ever-present charismatic leader. The tight-knit nature of small cults often means leaders more readily influence and control members.
Because small cults are so tightly wound, their members seem to be more subject to the mood swings and delusions of their leaders. Historically, mental health professionals have described some leaders of destructive cults as psychopaths, deeply disturbed individuals, or both. Within the environment of a tightly controlled small cult, there is what can be characterized as an almost symbiotic relationship between the leader and his or her followers. This close relationship in some cultic situations has become the basis for tragedy.
Members of small cult groups typically become largely dependent on the leader to determine the parameters of reality. In such a relationship, they may also feel unable to leave the group because of what they perceive as “exit costs.” Exit costs in destructive cults, as described by sociologist Benjamin Zablcoki, can range “from financial penalties, to relational commitments to various sorts of cognitive and emotional dependencies.”236
In such small cults, when the leader is delusional, progressively loses his or her grasp upon reality, or both, group members are often influenced to think, feel, and behave the same way. This situation can become a formula for tragedy. The consequences of such leader-driven, delusional thinking can be catastrophic and cause small cults to either implode or explode as we can see through the following historical overview.
1969—Charles Manson Murders
In the summer of 1969, a horrific cultic story would indelibly imprint itself on popular American culture, and its images would persist for decades to come.
During the morning hours of August 9, 1969, at a mansion located in an exclusive enclave of Los Angeles known as Benedict Canyon, five people were murdered. Among those found dead was actress Sharon Tate, the pregnant wife of film director Roman Polanski. Scrawled in blood at the scene were the words “Death to Pigs.”237
Later that night another multiple murder shook Los Angeles. A prominent couple, Rosemary and Leno LaBianca, were found stabbed to death in their home at the edge of Hollywood.
The investigation of what became known as the “Tate-LaBianca murders” culminated in the arrests of members of a small cult group calling itself “The Family” or the “Manson Family,” led by Charles Manson.
Manson had a history of manipulating and controlling others as well as a list of mental health issues, including schizophrenia and a paranoid-delusional disorder.238 He had spent most of his youth in public institutions, and other than brief paroles, he had been locked up for most of the 1950s and 1960s. Manson studied Scientology and Buddhism. In 1967, at the age of thirty-two, he was released from prison for the last time.239
The small cult of followers Manson assembled, which never numbered much more than one hundred, was fixated on his dark vision of a coming apocalypse. In his twisted mind Manson imagined that the TateLaBianca murders would be a pivotal point in an apocalyptic drama. Manson saw these senseless slayings as somehow becoming the ignition point of a race war, which would engulf society and lead to the fulfillment of his destiny.
What followed instead was a sensational ten-month trial that transfixed the media and morbidly fascinated the public.
The mindless devotion of the Manson Family members was unsettling, and it was recorded and broadcast on television. The glassy eyes and eerie smiles of the cult leader’s disciples were noticeable and deeply disturbing. His followers appeared totally disconnected from reality and completely enthralled by, and obsessed with, Manson.
Even though Charles Manson hadn’t been physically present at the murders, he was nevertheless found guilty of the crimes. The prosecution proved, to the satisfaction of the jury, that Manson had been so totally in control of his group members that they had essentially become his weapon of choice.
Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi pointed this out to the jury at trial during his summation. He said, “The Family at Spahn Ranch was Charlie Manson’s Family, ladies and gentlemen. He controlled every single facet of their daily existence.” The prosecutor explained, “Charles Manson’s Family preached love but practiced cold-blooded, savage murder. Why was that so? Because Charles Manson, their boss, ordained it. If Manson had wanted his Family to be singers in a church choir, that is what they would have been.” Bugliosi concluded, “Manson is guilty of all seven counts of murder under the vicarious liability rule of conspiracy.” 240
Charles Manson and his followers—Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Tex Watson—were all found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. But when California briefly abolished the death penalty in 1972, their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment.
Undue influence did nothing to mitigate the sentencing of Manson’s cult disciples despite the premise of their leader’s conviction. And after more than forty years, they remain in prison and are repeatedly denied parole.
“Everything that was good and decent in me I threw away,” Leslie Van Houten has said. It was her father, she explained, who ultimately helped her realize during his prison visits “what had happened, and the monster I became.”241
“They were brainwashed in a cult,” explained Simon Fraser University professor Karlene Faith.242 Faith, who teaches in prison, has been friends with Van Houten for years. Van Houten is the focus of Faith’s 2001 book The Long Prison Journey of Leslie Van Houten: Life beyond the Cult. When asked during her twentieth parole board hearing to explain her past actions in the Manson cult, Van Houten replied, “I feel that at that point I had really lost my humanity and I can’t know how far I would have gone. I had no regard for life and no measurement of my limitations.”243 Van Houten was once again denied parole after forty-four years in prison at the age of sixty-three. At the hearing Patrick Sequiera, the Los Angeles County deputy district attorney, offered the opinion that the Manson murders were so heinous that they might warrant an exception excluding the legal guarantee that provides for the possibility of parole.244
Charles Manson continues to be an object of morbid fascination and has become the ultimate icon of evil. Manson reportedly receives more mail than any other prison inmate in the United States.245
1974—SLA Abduction of Patty Hearst
In February 1974 a small political cult known as the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) abducted Patty Hearst, the nineteen-year-old heiress to a newspaper fortune in California.
Escaped convict Donald DeFreeze, who called himself “Field Marshall Cinqu,” led the Berkeley-based group of self-styled revolutionary radicals.
The SLA declared Hearst was a “prisoner of war,” who was taken to avenge the crimes of her wealthy parents.246 She was terrorized, physically abused, and held confined in a closet for weeks.247
Subjected to a combination of nonstop indoctrination and coercion, Hearst eventually collapsed psychologically and emotionally, embracing a new name and group identity. She became Tania, the name of a woman who ha
d died fighting with Che Guevara in Bolivia. Hearst, an unlikely revolutionary, even posed for photos as her new persona while holding a machine gun. The heiress wore a beret cocked on her head, emulating the original Tania. Hearst was also photographed during a bank robbery with the SLA.
In May 1974 DeFreeze and five SLA members died in a final shootout with police.
Hearst was finally found in September 1975 and arrested.
Patty Hearst‘s defense at her trial for bank robbery was that she had been brainwashed. But despite her abduction and abuse by the SLA, Hearst was found guilty. After serving almost two years in federal prison, President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence. President Bill Clinton later pardoned her in 2001. “The pardon represents an act of ultimate understanding for which she is thankful,” her lawyer said.248
Patty Hearst married her bodyguard, a San Francisco police officer, in 1979. The couple raised two children.
Looking back during an interview in 2002, Hearst said, “It’s something that affects you so deeply that in a way you can never really trust people again. You know that you have to and you know that not everybody is like this, but it changes your perception of people for the rest of your life. And in a way it’s sad to lose that kind of innocence, but in another way, you get a strength from it. And you can help other people.”249
A key component in Hearst’s recovery was the counseling psychologist Margaret Singer provided. Hearst said, “I had a psychologist who was incredibly good [Margaret Singer]…but you realize on your own that you don’t have to [think] the things that they’ve been telling you to think. You don’t have to participate in the disciplining of your mind.”250
1985—MOVE and the John Africa Standoff
Vincent Leaphart, known to his followers as “John Africa,” led the Philadelphia-based group known as MOVE. MOVE was based on the teachings of John Africa as set down in a book titled The Guidelines, which became the group’s bible. 251 Africa preached against technology and for equality with animals.
In 1978, when a policeman went to evict the communal group from its residence, he was killed. Nine MOVE members were later convicted of murder.252
MOVE members adopted the same surname as their leader, Africa, and adhered to a diet of raw food. But their relationship with the community around them was often strained. MOVE’s interaction with the outside world slipped away until its members became largely socially isolated, and they were “limited to the physical space of a 15-foot wide Philadelphia row house.”253 This little row house became the equivalent of a compound. Neighbors complained to authorities about MOVE, who used bullhorns to preach the group’s political message and reportedly lived in “unsanitary” conditions.254 Some MOVE members were criminals wanted for crimes ranging from parole violations and possession of illegal firearms to terrorist threats.255
MOVE behaved in a way that would historically repeat itself as the essential root cause of “cult standoffs” with authorities. That is, Africa and his followers largely refused to acknowledge the authority of virtually anyone other than their leader and saw law enforcement as an unwarranted intrusion.
When warrants were served on MOVE members in 1985, the group opened fire on police officers. In response to the group’s resistance and intransigence, a police helicopter dropped a “percussion” or “concussion” bomb on the house, which the mayor of Philadelphia referred to as a “stun device,”256 hoping to end the standoff. The explosion started a fire, which destroyed sixty-one houses. Within the MOVE row house, five children and six adults were found dead.257
The city of Philadelphia spent $42 million in the aftermath of the MOVE tragedy through settlements, investigation, and rebuilding efforts.258
MOVE continues to be a controversial group in Philadelphia. In 2002 a former member, thirty-four-year-old John Gilbride, was found dead in his car. Gilbride had been locked in a contentious custody battle with John Africa’s widow, Alberta Wicker Africa. Two weeks before his death, a court had granted Gilbride time with his son. But just hours before the unsupervised visit would have taken place, Gilbride was found dead. The murder remains unsolved.259
1989—Jeffrey Lundgren Murders
In the spring of 1989, cult leader Jeffrey Lundgren murdered Dennis and Cheryl Avery and their three teenage daughters. But their bodies weren’t found until January 1990 when they were discovered buried in a barn.
Lundgren recruited his followers primarily from the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, an offshoot of Mormonism. The cult leader had once been a tour guide at the denomination’s historic, original temple.
Lundgren claimed that God wanted him to lead a revolution in Kirtland, a small town twenty miles from Cleveland, Ohio. Like Charles Manson, Jeffrey Lundgren convinced his followers that they were fulfilling a special and chosen role in human history. God’s plan was for the group to seize the historic temple in Kirtland. Eventually Lundgren changed the plan and said the Avery family must be murdered to satisfy God as a sacrifice.
After the killings Lundgren’s followers seemed mystified by their cult experience. “We were supposed to help the hungry. We were supposed to help the poor. Of course, none of that happened. I still don’t know what happened…something went terribly wrong,” said former cult member Susan Luff.260
At times Lundgren demanded money from his followers at gunpoint. He told Luff to dance nude for him, explaining it was “the way of God.” Cult members described a life so controlled that almost anything they did could potentially be labeled as a “sin.” For example, Lundgren somehow considered sinful such things as eating too much garlic or keeping your own money.
Jeffrey Lundgren was criminally convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed on October 24, 2006.261
Unlike the followers of Charles Manson, who have either died in prison or remained confined to this day, five of Lundgren’s followers who were sentenced to prison have been released on parole.262 But Jeffrey Lundgren’s wife, son, and Susan Luff‘s husband, Ronald, remain in prison, serving minimum sentences that exceed one hundred years.263
1989—Roch Thériault Murders
The same year as the Lundgren group murders, a Canadian survivalist, cult leader Roch Thériault, was also arrested for murder. Thériault, like David Berg, used the name of Moses and ruled over a commune that included his “concubines,” twenty-two children, and other followers located near Burnt River, Ontario.
In 1989 social workers and police were investigating complaints of abuse and torture in Thériault’s group when they found the bodies of an infant and an adult. Solange Boislard had been brutally murdered and partially disemboweled as part of a purported “cult ritual.”264
Thériault engaged in both the physical and sexual abuse of his followers, including the amputation of the hand of one woman, Gabrielle Lavallee. Lavallee later wrote a book about her experience and explained, “The first step that I took was to use writing, to apply myself to deprogramming. Because we were brainwashed. And during the catharsis I was able to recreate the personality that I had before I endorsed his ideology.”265 The French film Savage Messiah, based on the book by Lavallee, was released in 2002.266
Thériault pled guilty to second-degree murder and in 1993 was sentenced to life in prison. During his imprisonment three of Thériault’s still-devoted “wives” were allowed conjugal visits, and the cult leader fathered more children. 267 Two of Thériault’s children wrote a book about their lives while growing up in the cult.268
Another prison inmate killed Roch Thériault, and he was found dead in his cell in February 2011.269
1993—David Koresh and the Waco Davidian Standoff
Vernon Howell (also known as David Koresh) was the son a single mother. After dropping out of school in the ninth grade, he moved to Tyler, Texas, and joined a Seventh-day Adventist church at eighteen. Howell, however, had repeated conflicts with church members and left the Adventist church. He then went to Waco, where he found an obscure Seventh-day Adventist splin
ter group known as the Branch Davidians.270
Originally founded by an excommunicated member of the Seventh-day Adventist church named Victor Houteff, the Branch Davidians were a relatively benign and peaceful group.271 Lois Roden was leading the small community when Howell arrived. The young man cultivated a close relationship with the aging leader and after her death assumed control of the group.
Howell’s rule over the Davidians soon led to violence. He launched a gun battle in 1987 with Lois Roden’s son, George Roden Jr., who opposed him. Howell and seven heavily armed followers attacked Roden, but he survived. Vernon Howell was tried for attempted murder. The jury ended up deadlocked, and prosecutors chose not to request a new trial. At the time Denise Wilkerson, the Texas prosecutor, warned that Howell “was building an arsenal.”272
Vernon Howell later changed his name to David Koresh, which he claimed reflected his special prophetic role in human history. David symbolized the restoration of the Davidic kingdom of Israel, and Koresh was supposedly the Hebrew pronunciation of the name of the Babylonian king Cyrus, who allowed the Jews to return to Israel.273 Koresh told his followers that the final conflict and judgment of the earth were coming soon. According to financial records, in preparation for that conflict, Koresh spent $199,715 on weapons and ammunition in the seventeen months immediately preceding a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATF) raid on the Davidian compound, which was called “Ranch Apocalypse.”
A standoff between the Waco Davidians and federal law enforcement began in February 1993 when BATF agents tried to serve David Koresh with a warrant. Like MOVE in Philadelphia, the Davidians responded with gunfire. Four BATF officers were slain, and sixteen were wounded. Koresh refused to surrender. The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) then assumed control of the perimeter around the compound and began negotiations with the cult leader. Koresh repeatedly broke promises to come out peacefully. A frustrated and exhausted FBI tried to end the fifty-one-day standoff by gassing the compound. Koresh decided that death in his compound was preferable to certain criminal prosecution, and like Jim Jones he chose death not only for himself, but also for his followers. On April 19, 1993, David Koresh, the self-proclaimed “Lamb of God,” ordered the compound burned to the ground. Eighty Davidians, including twenty-five children, were found dead in the rubble.
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