by Pete Earley
PROPHET OF DEATH
by Pete Earley
PUBLISHING HISTORY
William Morrow and Company hardcover / 1991
Replica Books / 1998
Pete Earley Inc. eBook / 2014
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1991 by Pete Earley, Inc.
Cover and book design by Evan Luzi
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Pete Earley. For information address: Pete Earley, Inc.
http://www.peteearley.com/
v1.0
Table of Contents
Prologue
Part One: Con Man
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part Two: Prophet
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Part Three: Killer
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Epilogue
Afterword
About the Author
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The easiest thing of all is to deceive one’s self; for what a man wishes he generally believes to be true.
– Demosthenes, Olynthiaca
Prologue
JUST before dawn on a cool April day in 1989, a lone man climbed a hill a few miles outside Kirtland, Ohio, a village of six thousand, located directly east of Cleveland. As the morning sunshine began to filter through the branches of the apple and maple trees that towered over him, the man dropped to one knee and began to pray.
“What is thy will?” Jeffrey Don Lundgren asked out loud. “Give me a sign. Tell me what to do.”
Lundgren stared upward into the morning light. He didn’t move, didn’t speak. For several minutes he waited, and then he nodded his head.
“I understand,” he said, addressing a vision that only he could see. “Thy will be done.”
It was misty on the night of April 17. There was no moon. The only light outside the farmhouse that Lundgren rented came from the neglected barn out back. It was a New England-style barn, painted red. It smelled inside of hay, rabbits, chickens, oil dripping from an abandoned car. An extension cord snaked across the floor leading into a little room at the rear of the barn. The cord had been tacked up the wall of the room and stretched out into the center of the ceiling. A single, naked bulb dangled down, illuminating a hole in the room’s dirt floor. The hole had been carefully dug and was precisely six and a half feet wide and seven feet seven inches long. It was four feet deep. Underground water had seeped into it, turning the bottom into two-inch-deep mud. The water gave the brown clay walls of the pit a sheen that glistened in the overhead light.
Just before 7:30 P.M., two men could be heard talking as they walked from the Lundgren farmhouse toward the barn. One of them cried out as soon as they stepped through a door into the barn.
“Ouch! What are you doing? This isn’t necessary. Goddamnit!”
The fifty-thousand-volt electric charge emitted by the handheld stun gun was supposed to immobilize a man for several seconds, possibly even knock him unconscious. But when it was jabbed into Dennis Avery’s side by the man walking beside him, it neither immobilized Avery nor knocked him down. It only stung and made him mad.
“Goddamn it!” Avery yelled when the gun was jabbed once again to his neck. “This isn’t necessary!”
Four men had been hiding in the barn and when it became apparent that the stun gun wasn’t working, they jumped out and grabbed Avery, forcing him down onto the floor. Avery didn’t fight. He was in poor physical shape, with a watermelon belly. Even his friends regarded the forty-nine-year-old Avery as weak. His attackers, mostly men in their late twenties, were all in excellent physical condition. Within seconds, Avery’s mouth, feet, and hands had been bound with gray two-inch-wide duct tape. His eyes, however, had not been covered. Jeffrey Lundgren had given specific instructions about Avery’s eyes. “I want him to see who is administering justice,” Lundgren had explained to his followers. “I want to look him eye to eye when I break his heart.”
As he was carried from the front of the barn back into the lighted room, Avery’s eyes flashed with anger. It was as if he were trying to communicate: “As soon as I’m loose, you are going to pay for doing this to me!” But the two men carrying him weren’t afraid. They gently slid Avery down into the pit in the floor. He fell clumsily onto his side in the mud. Without speaking, the two men dashed toward the door.
The lone light bulb served as a spotlight over the pit, casting shadows into the room’s corners. As Avery’s eyes adjusted to the brightness, Jeffrey Lundgren stepped forward out of the darkness. He held a .45-caliber, stainless steel, semiautomatic pistol in his right hand.
Avery managed to pull himself up so that he was sitting on his knees now. Lundgren raised his pistol. He would later recall with complete clarity void of all emotions what his thoughts were at that moment as he looked down on the bound man who had considered him to be his “very best friend.” Lundgren was thinking about verses from the Old Testament book of Isaiah, chapter 30.
Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord, that take counsel, but not of me.... You are a rebellious people, you lying children, you children who will not hear the law of the Lord.’
Lundgren’s right hand tightened on the .45. “I had told Dennis Avery what would happen if he continued to sin, continued to deny the truth, continued to reject my teachings, but he continued to choose darkness rather than light and he had no one to blame but himself for leading himself and his family into this pit of damnation.”
He slowly squeezed the trigger.
The first hollow-pointed slug smacked Avery’s torso and knocked him sideways; the second round hit so quickly that it almost went in the same hole even though his body was recoiling. Avery’s taped face hit the muddy bottom of the pit with a loud smack.
Iniquity shall be to you as a branch ready to fall, and you shall break it-you shall not spare the wicked.
It was another verse from Isaiah.
“All right, everybody, come look at this, come see what death is,” Jeffrey called to the others. The five men who had subdued Avery came into the room and gathered around the hole. Lundgren ha
d warned them earlier that God would someday demand each of them to “slay the wicked.” They would be forced to kill dozens, possibly more.
Lundgren examined the face of each man. He was still holding his .45 pistol. The men seemed terrified, yet mesmerized by the body in the pit. He knew that most of them had doubted him, doubted that he would actually go through with it.
“Okay, bring in the next one,” he said. He had tasted death and was eager to continue.
Lundgren’s plan was simple. Dennis Avery’s wife, Cheryl, forty- two, would be the next to be put into the pit and executed. While Dennis was being murdered, Cheryl and her three daughters were sitting in the Lundgren farmhouse less than fifty yards away, visiting with the wives of the men in the barn. She would be lured from the farmhouse by one of Lundgren’s accomplices, who would tell her that Dennis needed help in the barn sorting through some personal belongings stored there. Once inside the barn, she would be over- powered by Lundgren’s followers and bound with duct tape. Her husband had no idea that he had been sentenced to death by Lundgren, nor would Cheryl. After Lundgren executed her, the Averys’ daughters—Trina, fifteen, Rebecca, thirteen, and Karen, six—would be brought into the barn and put into the pit one at a time, the oldest first. Not only would their hands, feet, and mouths be bound, but their eyes would be covered with duct tape. The scriptures, Lundgren had explained, only required that the man of the family be allowed to see his executioner.
As Jeffrey waited for his followers to bring Cheryl into the barn, he glanced down into the pit. Blood was soaking into the back of Avery’s plaid wool shirt. There was no sign of life. Killing him had been easy. The pistol in Jeffrey’s hand felt good. Jeffrey decided that he had been smart to choose the .45 automatic. He had considered using a shotgun, but had rejected the idea because of the noise. Someone driving past the farm might have heard the blast and been curious. The cracking sound of a handgun was more crisp. He had considered using a .357 Magnum or a .9 millimeter, but was afraid that neither was powerful enough. Lundgren had read stories about police officers who had shot criminals three or more times with rounds from a .357 and still not killed them. There was no reason to prolong the Averys’ pain. Of course, the .45 had certain disadvantages. Little Karen Avery only weighed thirty-six pounds and shooting her with the big handgun seemed a bit extreme. Only a few nights earlier, Lundgren had gone to the Averys’ house for dinner and had bounced Karen on his knee. While she giggled at the excitement of being tossed up and down, he had wondered if he should use a smaller caliber pistol to kill her. But Lundgren had eventually settled on the .45 on the assumption that it would be better to use too much rather than too little firepower.
Lundgren could hear voices from outside the barn now. Cheryl Avery was being brought into the trap. Another scripture came to him: Revelation, chapter 6, the opening of the seven mystical seals that signal the second coming of Jesus Christ, Judgment Day, the beginning of the Millennium, the end of the world. He thought about verses 2 through 8, passages that describe the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see. . . .
Cheryl was in the barn now. Lundgren could hear the sound of duct tape being ripped from its spool. It was only seconds before she would be brought to him. He stepped back into the shadows with his .45 automatic.
. . . and there went out another horse that was red; and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, that they should kill one another . . .
PART ONE
Con Man
If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams . . .
Deuteronomy 13:1
Chapter 1
ALICE Elizabeth Keehler was eighteen when she met Jeffrey Don Lundgren. She was a senior in high school. He was a freshman at Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg, Missouri, about forty miles southeast of Independence. Alice had caught a ride to the campus with the youth minister from her church in Odessa, a farming town north of the school. Usually her parents, Ralph and Donna, didn’t let Alice go out of town without a chaperon, but they figured she was safe with the pastor, and Alice was intent on using the college library. She was writing her senior English term paper about the origins of the Book of Mormon and the public library in Odessa had only a few books on the Mormon religion and its founder, Joseph Smith, Jr. Alice was a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a branch of Mormonism, and she wanted to make certain that her paper was thoroughly documented. Most of the “Gentiles” in her English class would scoff at her beliefs. She considered Joseph Smith, Jr., a prophet, was convinced that God had spoken directly to him, and believed, as all good Mormons did, that the Book of Mormon was as important as, if not more important than, the Old and New Testaments in the Bible. That was why Alice had to use the college library. If her paper swayed just one of her classmates, then all the ridicule would be worth it. Alice loved her God and she was confident that He loved her.
On this particular Friday night in the spring of 1969, Alice finished at the library earlier than expected so she walked across campus to a former two-story house that had been converted by the RLDS Church into a student union. Alice immediately spotted an older girl from Odessa who offered to introduce her to the other students. The only boy Alice would later remember was Jeffrey. “He was dressed in a neatly pressed white short-sleeve shirt with tiny thin blue-and-yellow pinstripes,” she gushed to her best friend later back in Odessa. “His shirt matched his blue corduroy slacks. He was also wearing brown penny loafers and no socks! Can you believe it. He wasn’t wearing any socks!”
Although they had talked for only a few minutes, Alice was smitten. “Jeffrey was like no other man I had ever met,” she said. Neither of them made any effort to keep in touch after that chance meeting. Alice returned home, graduated, and spent a week at a church-run summer camp. But she didn’t forget Jeffrey. One of the other girls there had just finished her freshman year at CMSU and she had gone out on a date with Jeffrey. Alice quizzed her about him. “He tried to get me drunk and take advantage of me,” the girl confided. Alice was horrified. She couldn’t believe that the friendly boy she had met would be so pushy.
During evening vespers at the camp, Alice decided to ask God whom she would eventually marry. Alice had been taught that a woman’s role was to serve her husband and raise a family. What would her husband be like? she asked, as she prayed silently with the other campers perched on a split-log bench around a bonfire. After several minutes of silence, one of the adult counselors stood up and began to prophesy. One by one, the counselor called out each camper’s name. He was being moved “by the spirit” to give them a message from God. This was a common practice in the RLDS Church and Alice believed that whatever the counselor said was from the Lord.
“Unto my sister Alice,” the man proclaimed, “thus saith the spirit. I have seen your tears and I have heard your prayers and I will never leave you comfortless. I will direct your path and I will hold your life in the palm of my hand for there I have engraven you.”
While others might have thought the prophecy obscure, Alice understood. She felt God was telling her not to worry about her future husband. “God was going to direct me to him!”
On the final day of camp, the group held a Sunday morning testimonial service. Because it was raining, they met in the dining hall and one of the RLDS’s most revered patriarchs spoke. “We were told that the fellowship we had enjoyed that week had been acceptable in God’s sight and that it was pleasing unto Him,” Alice said. “The patriarch said that our generation was the one that would see the establishment of God’s kingdom here on earth and that many of us would be instruments in His hands in the bringing forth of His kingdom in these latter days.”
And then the speaker had looked directly at Alice, picking her out of the group for no apparent reason. He called her by name and said that God had given him a message for her.
“And
unto you, my daughter Alice,” he said, “thus saith the Lord. You shall have the answer to your prayers. You shall marry a companion whom I have prepared to bring forth my kingdom and he shall be great in the eyes of these people and shall do much good unto the children of men, for I have prepared him to bring forth a marvelous work and wonder.”
Alice hadn’t told anyone about her prayers. Yet the patriarch had known exactly what she had asked God. She began to cry. “God had chosen me,” she said, “lowly me, to help bring about His kingdom on earth.”
A few weeks after summer camp ended, Alice was asleep in her bedroom at night when she felt something pressing down on her. She was being crushed by what she would later describe as “an evil presence.” Alice couldn’t raise her arms, lift her legs, or roll off the bed. She was paralyzed, and as she lay there terrified, the weight of the evil presence began to increase until she felt as if she were about to be crushed by Satan himself. In a panic, Alice began to pray and when she called out Christ’s name, the evil spirit was jerked off her as if a hand had reached down and grabbed Satan by the neck and pulled him away.
No one doubted Alice when she described her experience the next Sunday at the RLDS church in Odessa. Many in the congregation had shared similar supernatural experiences during testimonials at church. If anything, Alice’s story was a comforting confirmation that Jesus Christ protected those who called for His help. After the church service, Alice was congratulated by members for giving such an inspirational and moving testimonial. She was clearly someone special and destined to do great things in the church.
When Alice enrolled at Central Missouri State University that fall as a freshman, one of the first boys she bumped into was Jeffrey. He was playing cards with his best friend, Keith Johnson, at the RLDS student union. Alice knew Keith from various church events and when he saw her, Keith waved her over and began introducing her to everyone.
“We’ve already met,” Alice beamed when Jeffrey was introduced.
Years later, after Jeffrey had formed his cult in Kirtland, he would often reminisce about the first time he met Alice. “From the instant that I first saw her,” he would say, “I knew she was my wife.” It was as if he had always known her, as if they had been together before, he would say, as if they had always been together since the beginning of time. It was an enchanting story. It was also a lie.
