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Famous Jehovah's Witness African American Celebrities

2009-02-22T22:39:07Z

Michael Jackson

Question: Does any one remember what it was the Watchtower put out shortly after all the Michael Jackson eruption? I remember there were comments, but just shy of a name. We all knew who they were talking about. Any one remember?

Answer #1: I can add to this the known fact that the Watchtower Society harassed Jackson about the Thriller video, causing him to add a disclaimer to the video that it did not represent his beliefs about the supernatural. He also gave an 'interview' in the Awake! magazine saying he was naughty and sorry and he would never do it again. Does anyone have that?

Answer #2: This might be the one:

Famous Jehovah's Witnesses

2009-02-22T21:03:41Z

A range of participation is represented by these individuals, from full activity to disaffiliation.

PRINCE - currently an active Jehovah's Witness

Maurizio Bianchi - Musician

Ivana Brkic - Croatian Musician

Richard Cameron- Dutch Musician

Valerie Campbell - Mother of Naomi Campbell

Tom Edur - Former NHL ice hockey player

Ida E. Eisenhower (Mother of President Eisenhower)

Leopold Engleitner - Buchenwald concentration camp survivor and centenarian

Larry Graham - Sly & the Family Stone

Danny Granger - Indiana Pacers small forward

Teresa Graves - Reputedly the first black woman to play the lead in a police movie, also a singer

Gary Gygax - Co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons

Katherine Jackson - Michael Jackson's mother

Rebbie Jackson - Singer, daughter of Katherine Jackson

Scott Johnson - Actor

Phillip Landry - Musican

Maher Shalal Hash Baz - Japanese musician, name comes from the Book of Isaiah

Margaret Keane - Artist who said converting "changed her life."[1]

Peter Knowles - Famous soccer player in England who quit his football career in 1970 aged 24 to join the Jehovah's Witnesses

Brian Locking - Bass guitarist with The Shadows for eighteen months, but left to Jehovah's Witnesses activities.

Hank Marvin - Lead guitarist for The Shadows

Bohumil Müller - Czech survivor of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp and underground religious leader under Communism.

Viv Nicholson - Major pools winner

Evelyn Ntoko (first wife of Nelson Mandela Prince -

Musician Ken Richmond - The man who banged the gong in the Rank Organisation film logo from 1955 onward.

Miu Sakamoto - Japanese Singer, a Daughter of Ryuichi Sakamoto andAkiko Yano

Damo Suzuki (Converted in the 1970s, current membership status uncertain)

Bobby Tambling - English footballer

Phil Terry - member of the 60's R&B group The Intruders.

David Thomas - Avant-garde rocker, "Jehovah's Kingdom come"[2][3]

Jean Terrell - Replaced Diana Ross in the Supremes in 1970.

Akira Toriyama - Japanese Mangaka(Cartoonist), Author of Dragon Ball(Manga)

Yoshito Usui - Japanese Mangaka, Author of Crayon Shin-chan

Reena Virk - Canadian child murder victim

Lark Voorhies - actress, Saved By The Bell

Lou Whitaker - Former MLB baseball player for the Detroit Tigers.

Serena Williams - tennis player ; 8 Grand Slam champion

Venus Williams - tennis player ; 5 time Grand Slam champion

Akiko Yano - Japanese Singer, Former wife of Ryuichi Sakamoto

Solveig Romero - Mexico and Switzerland, Actress and wife of Martin Campbell, the director of James Bond Casino Royale

Chuck Winfield - Former Trumpet player for Blood, Sweat, and Tears.

List of former Jehovah's Witnesses

Gregg Alexander - The New Radicals' lead singer; raised by mother
Peter Andre - Singer raised in Australia, presently living in London with wife pin up model *Jordan
Naomi Campbell- Supermodel; Raised by mother
Dwight David Eisenhower who became the 34th President of the United States (1953–1961)
Geri Halliwell - Singer (Spice Girls); Raised as a Jehovah's Witness^{[verification needed]}
Anthony Henderson - Famous quick tongued rap artist from legendary group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony a.k.a "Krayzie Bone", Sawed-Off Gangsta, or Leathaface
Barbara Grizzuti Harrison - American writer of Visions of Glory: A History and a Memory of Jehovah's Witnesses(converted to Catholicism)
Latoya Jackson
Michael Jackson - Michael became a Jehovah's Witness but disassociated himself shortly after his hit album, Thriller
Olin R. Moyle
Dave Mustaine - Guitarist (ex-Metallica; Megadeth; ex- MD .45)
Miki Nakatani - Japanese Actress, Raised as a Jehovah's Witness
Gloria Naylor - Novelist
Michelle Rodriguez - actress
Patti Smith - Singer and poet
Mickey Spillane - Novelist
Leo Volpe
Wayans brothers - Actors/Comediens ; Raised Jehovah's Witnesses
Jill Scott-Singer; rasied as a Jehovah's Witness
Hinano Yoshikawa - Japanese Fashion model and actress, Raised as a Jehovah's Witness
K-os - Canadian R&B artist ; Raised Jehovah's Witness
Selena Quintanilla Perez - Tejano singer ; raised Jehovah's Witnesses

Further discussion here http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/131024/1/Wow-a-long-list-of-Famous-active-JWs-and-xJWs

Discover the issues concerning African Americans and the Watchtower Society

Ex Jehovah's Witness Michael Jackson Dead

2009-06-25T23:11:59Z

Michael Jackson the former Jehovah's Witnesses has died of cardiac arrest it has been reported in Los Angeles today, Thursday 25th June. The reclusive star was reported to have had issues with prescription drugs during the buildup to a 50 date London tour. Firefighters arrived to a 911 call to his Bel Air home after he had collapsed and took him to UCLA Medical Center.

The Family, Faith and Fate of Michael Jackson

2009-07-02T00:50:23Z

Much of the world was saddened last week by the death of Michael Jackson, famous pop star known and loved by millions. It will be helpful to many to read a quick review of comments and anecdotes about Michael's religious beliefs and his upbringing in the Jehovah's Witness sect, and how it influenced his life and his dreams, and perhaps even his ultimate demise.

"Dr." Firpo Carr, a Typical Watchtower Apologist

2009-05-02T03:49:40Z

Firpo Carr is one of the newest self appointed Watchtower apologists. He has evidently so far survived the Watchtower's attempt to control religious publication by members. His recent self-published book on blacks and the Watchtower titled, A History of the Watchtower From a Black American Perspective tries to whitewash their embarrassing history of racism

Jehovah's Witnesses, Blacks and Discrimination

2009-03-18T05:41:48Z

This paper researches the history of the racism found in the official teachings of the Watchtower Bible and Track Society, whose followers are now known as Jehovah's Witnesses. Their history reveals they are not free of racism as they now claim, but have manifested extreme racists views in their official, mandatory teachings. Even though 52% of the Witness' membership are non-white, not a single minority person held a leadership position in 1994.

Families Broken Apart by Jehovah's Witnesses: Can They Be Restored?

2009-01-25T07:52:45Z

reprinted from the Mar/Apr 1990 Bethel Ministries Newsletter

Jim and Cathy were happily married for 14 years. They have three children, Beth (12), Andrew (11) and Toni (9). Jim did not object when Cathy started having "Bible studies" in their home with the Jehovah's Witnesses. He thought they were just another Christian denomination. Three years later, she was divorcing him and seeking custody of the children. Cathy had become a Jehovah's Witness, and was determined that her children would be brought up in what she referred to as the "discipline and mental regulating of Jehovah," but her husband called it mind control.

Across the nation and rapidly increasing in other countries, families are being broken up by one partner's involvement in the Jehovah's Witnesses. In some cases the non-Witness seeks the divorce, in many others the Witness is encouraged to divorce after the non-Witness mate begins to attack her faith and criticizes what the Witness calls "God's organization."

Why does one's husband or wife suddenly decide to become a Jehovah's Witness? Why does their personality change so quickly and ominously? What can the other mate do to hold the marriage together, and to help get their mate out of this religion? Let's examine a few helpful hints.

The Initial Contact

People become Jehovah's Witnesses for a number of reasons. For those who have a legitimate hunger for God, the Witnesses appear to resemble what many think Christianity should be: members do not smoke, they dress modestly, they attend religious services several times a week, they share their faith with others. Furthermore, they shun "worldly" activities and parties (supposedly). They read the Bible and study religious subjects almost daily, they do not go to war, and they talk about a world where there will be no more pain and suffering. For this reason alone the Witnesses are appealing to many.

Others may have not-so-noble reasons for getting involved. Loneliness, resentment towards one's church or family (yes, some get involved out of rebellion to their upbringing!), and even a desire for power and authority over others can be strong factors in one's getting involved. Cults often enable one to be somebody in a world where they have been a "nobody," due to their socio-economic status, their personality weaknesses or their lack of opportunity.

Housewives often invite the Witnesses in because they may be lonely, they crave spiritual things and/or have been spiritually unfulfilled. Perhaps they no longer feel loved by their husbands and they need something to help them cope with life. In many cases, the sudden conversion of a family member or friend may be all it takes to start a person on the "road to paradise," a road that may very well destroy their lives and the lives of their family and relatives over the next few years.

The Family Reacts

"What could be the harm in studying the Bible?" asks the housewife, as her husband is beginning to lose his temper. Cathy had been away from church for years, angry over the hypocrisy she noticed in her last church that she had attended for five years. Since she had been away from Christianity, she found it hard to cope with raising three children and with a husband that worked 60 hours a week to feed them. The Witness ladies who came by were so pleasant, so interested in her welfare! She could always back out if she didn't like it, and they said there was no obligation. Soon Jim didn't see it that way, however, and he was determined (by forceful persuasion) to stop Cathy from even talking to the Witnesses. "They'll brainwash you!" Jim roared. Cathy laughed nervously, afraid of saying too much. She didn't want to tell him that she was even going to meetings every other week, and would be going door-to-door soon! Jim would go through the roof if he knew. She had better be cool.

Jim's reaction was typical. Many people have heard that Jehovah's Witnesses are a cult, but they cannot seem to tell others why. All have heard stories of Jehovah's Witnesses' stand on blood transfusions, not voting or defending their country, and their believing in the end of the world any day, even predicting the year for Armageddon a few times. Though the person who starts studying with the JWs usually cannot appreciate it, this is the most natural reaction of family members to one's involvement with a cult. Being taught that this is the first sign of "persecution for Jehovah's sake," however, the Witness does not seem to grasp the obvious, and begins to either withdraw or to lash out against their mate.

Few of the mates of the one who begins involvement with the Witnesses will handle the situation with tact and care. Not knowing the methods of mind control cults and how to circumvent them, they react with strong emotions, often alienating their mate at the most critical time. Only later (out of desperation) do they talk to an expert in mind control methods. That's why the need for education in this field is critical.

Why Some Divorce

"I'm getting a divorce!" said Cathy as she stormed out of the house, on her way to pick up the kids from school. Jim refused to let her take the kids to the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses, saying that he "would rather they become atheists!" than to become Jehovah's Witnesses. Jim was over-reacting; he was brought up in a Methodist Church, and really did believe in the God of the Bible. He was getting increasingly frustrated, though. The local minister had been no help, and Jim was getting angry with God for allowing this "cult" to split up his family after several years of what he considered a happy marriage. He felt like blowing up the Kingdom Hall! (which, by the way, has happened before).

The local elders in the Kingdom Hall sympathized with Cathy. They had faced this before on numerous occasions. Many husbands, upon finding out about their wives studying with the Witnesses, become infuriated. The elders knew just what to say to Cathy (he is persecuting you for Jehovah's sake; he doesn't love the truth), as well as how to keep her from being swayed by others (you should be at all the meetings and go door-to-door; don't listen to the enemy when he puts doubts in your mind!). Other housewives who had lost their husbands years before were available at the Hall to console Cathy and to encourage her to "put Jehovah above all else."

Yes, Cathy did have doubts. All persons studying with the Witnesses start out with doubts. What if it IS a cult? Is it worth it to lose my family? For my children to lose their father? Does God really want me to join this organization? What if they are well-meaning but deceived? For Cathy, the pressure from both sides had become tremendous: common sense on one hand telling her something was wrong, but the fear of God destroying her at Armageddon on the other hand prevented her from entertaining nagging doubts. Sooner or later she had to resolve the "dissonance" in her soul. She had to make a choice, and she apparently just did. She was leaving Jim and taking the kids with her, even if it killed her. She was tired of his unreasonable nature and his anger that drove her to tears. Besides, how could she serve Jehovah married to an unbeliever? Even the elders in the Kingdom Hall understood, and said they would be willing to keep the kids when necessary. Jim could do whatever he wanted, but their blood would not be on her hands at Armageddon!

Child Custody

Many Witness kids do not remain Witnesses by the time they reach their late teens. Growing up in the Watchtower has been likened by some to "growing up in a small Western town, miles from nowhere, with nothing to do. All you see is sagebrush and cactus, and anything fun to do is always bad." Many of these kids manage to escape, but not always to a more wholesome environment! Plagued by guilt and the fear of dying at Armageddon, they stumble through life like lost children until someone is able to help them understand what it means to be a victim of a mind control cult. If they do find such a person, they are indeed lucky! It is not likely they will find such a person in the average church. They are few and far between.

Knowing this, it seems ironic that many mates seeking divorce would want to raise their children as Witnesses! But, alas, they have not heard such stories. They hear only good things in the Kingdom Hall. "Apostates," those who leave the Watchtower for any reason, are off limits!

Due to the increase of child custody cases in recent years, the Watchtower has prepared a booklet, Preparing For Child Custody Cases, that trains their children what to say in such proceedings. The booklet cannot be purchased at the Kingdom Hall, but is only available to those who ask the Society for it who are undergoing such court cases.

"Theocratic tact" (the deceptive way the Witnesses present themselves to outsiders) is used in court to sway the judge. Witness children are presented as models of good behavior, with a wide variety of interests in the arts and school activities, as well as desiring a good education. This is all a lie of course, since Witness children are instructed that competitive sports are bad, seeking any kind of popularity through school or community activities is bad, college is off limits, and hobbies should be kept to a minimum, since the door-to-door sales activities are the most important thing in life! One cannot survive Armageddon or even be counted as a Jehovah's Witness unless one regularly spends time selling Watchtower literature (or as they call it, "placing" literature). Children are to attend all meetings, and have to sit with the adults. They cannot move, chew gum, color pictures, or talk. Even going to the restroom is strongly discouraged! None of this information may reach the judge's ears, however. "Worldly people just do not understand us," the Witness would say in defense of using their "theocratic tact."

Counseling Important

Few of the mates of those getting involved with the Witnesses are willing to lose their marriage over it. Many of those who end up in divorce just didn't know what to do; they felt helpless and hopeless. Though some say every person has a free will and we shouldn't force our view on them, it should be recognized that those getting caught up in the JWs are victims of specific mind control tactics, and do not actually operate under a "free will." If they were able to see the situation a little more objectively and weigh all sides of the issue, they would almost always reject the Watchtower! This seldom occurs, however, due to (1) an inability to get them to think objectively, and (2) the lack of good information about the JWs. While the latter can be dealt with rather easily (see our publications list!), the former requires someone to talk to and/or work with who knows how to open up the minds of those in cults.

A good place to start is in your own church or community. Ask around for those who deal with cults. I don't mean just those who print or distribute information about cults (they are plentiful), but those who have a successful record of dealing with members of cults directly. Ask them how many active members of cults they have rescued. If no one is available locally, a call to a ministry such as this one will be helpful. (Along with this issue we are printing a list of ministries to JWs in the U.S.) If one wants to go all the way, one can hire an exit-counselor who specializes in getting people out of cults.

One should also not neglect seeing a marriage counselor, especially if they have had experience with couples who have religious differences. (Many divorces over "religion" are really not about religion at all. Their relationship simply came to a head, and the religious issue was convenient.) Seek marriage counseling, preferably from a Christian perspective if at all possible. Often a good counselor will help each person to see the other more objectively and with a little more love and understanding.

What to Do, What NOT to Do

Here are a few guidelines to remember:

DON'T call your mate names, don't tell them they are in a cult. Avoid any accusatory language or mannerisms. Control your temper!

DON'T give them a lot of literature to read against the WT unless you really believe they will read it; they will usually perceive it as an attack and "close up."

DON'T threaten them with divorce or taking the kids away, etc. Let them know you love them and stand beside them, not against them.

DON'T say things against the WT you cannot substantiate, or they will not take you seriously.

DO read all you can about cults, mind control methods, and the history of the Watchtower. Being well-informed and comfortable with what you know will be both impressive to your mate and will help you to be secure in what you believe. This makes the Watchtower less threatening to you!

DO adopt a "questioning" attitude, not being overly critical but concerned and interested in what they are learning. Show them you are interested in the truth as well.

DO try and arrange for ex-members of other cults to join in a casual dinner or evening time, letting them share their experiences in a group OTHER than JWs. (The doubts that others had about their own groups will help your mate's own doubts to resurface.)

DO be patient and pray for your mate. Many JWs end up leaving the organization after a number of years. If they are willing to THINK and DISCUSS, there is hope, and even if they seem obstinate now, they may very well change later.

Why It Is Dangerous To Associate With Jehovah’s Witnesses

2009-09-24T01:09:23Z

Barbara delivered this lecture in Paris, France, and in Rimini, Italy

Knock, knock. "Hello, I’m stopping by briefly to share with you some good news. Many people feel under pressure because of the stressful times in which we live. Do you think God intended that we live this way? So many people are depressed. I bet you know somebody who is. I have this excellent magazine that discusses Help for Sufferers of Depression."

Sound familiar? In this audience are people who have done the knocking and given a similar message to the person who opened the door. Or some of you have heard such a message from Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs). Certainly, the message doesn’t sound dangerous. Why be afraid of JWs? They don’t handle snakes, rip your heart out, or make you drink poisoned Kool Aid. They won’t ask you to be a suicide bomber either.

Jehovah’s Witnesses: A Threat To The Social Family Fabric

2009-03-23T18:14:50Z

Untold thousands of individuals have suffered from emotional and psychological pain inflicted by Jehovah’s Witnesses due to the breakup of families. Most people are only familiar with Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs) to the extent of being awakened on a weekend by zealous proselytizing recruits. But there is a great deal more to know; the Watchtower is a twentieth-century American religious movement that has adversely affected families worldwide, eroding family cohesiveness and unity once a family member starts the indoctrination phase of the recruitment process.

The Jehovah's Witnesses and the Theocratic Subversion of Ethnicity

2009-05-03T17:55:12Z

Since their origins in late nineteenth-century America, the Jehovah's Witnesses have evolved into a well-defined and efficiently organized religious group of global proportions. Recent Society statistics indicate that less than one fourth of contemporary Witnesses live in the country of the movement's birth; the Society now claims a world-wide core membership of over four million.1

Jackson to Fire Islam Bodyguards

2009-05-02T04:05:31Z

New York Post 12/31/2003 Michael Jackson's Contact with the Nation of Islam - Michael Jackson is sick of his aggressive Nation of Islam bodyguards and wants to fire them, sources told The Post yesterday. Jackson's relatives and business associates are shopping around for other security outfits, a source said.

Has The Artist Formerly Known As Prince become a Witness?

2009-05-02T01:32:34Z

I was watching TV last night and caught part of a ninety-minute interview with the Artist. Larry Graham (sp) and Chaka Kahn (sp) were interviewed too. The Artist kept saying the reason he was doing the interview was to say that it was time that people "unite" for something, and that something could be "freedom." he said, when praised by a very emotional fan, that he was nothing and the important thing is that "Jesus has returned."

From Slavery and Religion To Freedom

2009-05-02T02:00:48Z

Would the slave trade have been outlawed before 1880 if it had not been for what is known as the Haitian Revolution? Would the escaped slave Frederick Douglass, eventually assumed of his generation the most highly regarded of the Black male abolitionists, have been in the world wide publishing work before 1846 for what he felt was God’s Kingdom to Come on earth if there were no Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society?

Pro-Jehovah's Witness Stories

2009-05-01T17:08:20Z

A selection of letters submitted to Freeminds in support of Jehovah's Witnesses

Family Murders and Tortures by Jehovah's Witnesses

2009-03-21T19:12:20Z

Calgary Herald - 2-26-2009

Kostelniuk chronicled the murders of his two children and ex-wife in his book Wolves Among Sheep: The True Story of Murder in a Jehovah's Witness Community

http://www.freeminds.org/life-stories/former-publishers/the-witness-murders.html

Man Strangles Wife, Calls Elder to Confess

http://www.wwltv.com/topstories/stories/wwl011909tpstrangle.d6a7c0c.html

Man strangles wife, calls pastor to confess, LA - Jan 19, 2009

Ortega is the member of a local Jehovah Witness congregation, police said. Ortega and his wife, San Juana Isabel Ortega, 32, argued throughout the early ...

Monday, January 19, 2009 - Matthew Pleasant - Houma Courier

HOUMA – After strangling his wife during a Sunday morning argument while their young children slept nearby, a 47-year-old welder called his pastor to confess the slaying, according to police.

Rodolfo Ortega, 320 Coach Court, Houma, is charged with second-degree murder.

At 10 a.m., police arrived at Ortega’s trailer after receiving a call from Ortega’s pastor, said Houma Police Lt. Jude McElroy. Ortega is the member of a local Jehovah Witness congregation, police said.

Ortega and his wife, San Juana Isabel Ortega, 32, argued throughout the early morning without waking their four children, who were sleeping, McElroy said.

New details in murder of 12-year-old girl 3/15/08

It was all in the name of God

By JOHN COLES - March 21, 2007

AN evil foster mother was yesterday convicted of horrifically abusing three children — to raise them “in accordance with her faith”.

Fanatical Jehovah’s Witness Eunice Spry, 62, believed the two girls and a boy were possessed by the Devil and wanted to “purify” them.

She beat them with sticks and metal bars, forced them to drink bleach and eat their own vomit and faeces, and starved them naked in a locked room for a month.

She also kicked them, pushed sticks down their throats, strangled them, forced their hands on a hot cooker and rubbed their faces with sandpaper, a court was told.

The kids were banned from listening to pop or wearing trendy clothes — and were punished if found with sweets or music mags.

One punishment saw the trio, identified only as Victims A, B and C, forced to stay totally still for long periods. If they moved they would be beaten as a further deterrent.

The abuse went undetected for almost 20 years as Spry pulled the youngsters out of school and taught them at her two rat-infested homes in Tewkesbury, Gloucs.

Council inspectors also failed to spot the horror despite regularly visiting to check on the kids’ education.

But it finally came to light in December 2004, when Victim A — one of the two girls — ran away from home.

Victim B and Victim C, the boy, made statements to police and Spry, estranged from her second husband, was arrested in February 2005.

Doctors called the kids’ injuries “extraordinary”. They also had depression. Both girls had attempted suicide.

Spry, described as chilling and cold, denied abusing the three and said she was only trying to bring them up according to her faith.

She told a jury at Bristol Crown Court:

“I sweated blood for those children. I went to great lengths to protect them from immorality.

“From a Christian point of view we expect our children to be obedient. As it says in the Bible, ‘Children, be obedient to your parents and make the Lord proud’.”

But after a five-week trial, jurors convicted her of 24 counts of abuse between 1986 and 2005 — plus two of intimidating witnesses.

Judge Simon Darwall-Smith remanded Spry in custody pending reports before she is sentenced next month.

Her three victims — now young adults — went to live with Spry as youngsters with social services approval.

But Victim A said they were treated as “slaves”, rarely allowed out and told to lie about their bruises . She said: “We were beaten, starved, drowned in the bath and kicked down the stairs.

“Mum had an array of sticks, and would beat us with them and kick us till we were collapsing with pain.

“If we screamed she’d push the sticks down our throats.”

Victim A said the family’s homes were infested with rats and the children would often sleep on the floor.

At one point she said Spry made her wear a sign on her back at her local Jehovah’s Witnesses church, reading: “This child is evil. Do not look at her or talk to her.”

The girl said her earliest memory was of Spry making her eat dog food and, when she was sick, eat the vomit.

Victim B said Spry had a system of punishments for lying — heavily prohibited by Jehovah’s Witnesses.

She said: “She’d pour washing-up liquid down our throats and say, ‘Don’t throw up or you’ll have more’. We were told not to speak to anyone. She believed other people were worldly as they didn’t believe in her religion.” Victim C said: “I can only describe mother’s punishment methods as torture.”

Last night the Gloucestershire Safeguarding Children Board said lessons had to be learned from the case. A spokesman said: “These children were seen by many different professionals, but few were a consistent presence. Information was not shared.”

The Jehovah’s Witnesses said the faith did not condone abuse. A spokesman said: “We don’t tolerate physical cruelty.”

from here and here

Baby Found Dead In Yard - Slaying Result Of Possible Religious Sacrifice

from here: April 28, 2006

A 9-month-old boy who was found dead in a neighborhood on Detroit's eastside Friday morning, may have been killed as a form of religious sacrifice.

According to police, Raphael Thomas and his live-in girlfriend, Betty Jenkins, were involved in a Bible study in their Detroit home when Thomas and his girlfriend began to argue.

The two exchanged words and Thomas grabbed hold of a can of red spray paint and wrote the word "revelations" on the walls throughout the home. He tossed his Bible outside along with other items that may be linked to a Jehovah Witness, according to police.

Thomas then grabbed his son and left the home, Local 4 reported.

Jenkins phoned police, but help didn't come in time. Thomas was found walking along Gratiot Avenue in Detroit stabbing himself. He inflicted more than 30 knife wounds on his body, according to police.

The baby was not with Thomas, but was found dead a short time after in the back yard of a home. Police said the baby had been mutilated from the inside out.

Thomas told police he freed his baby from the evils of the earth, leading investigators to believe the slaying of the baby was a form of religious sacrifice.

The man was taken to Detroit Receiving Hospital and treated with nearly 200 stitches. He remains in the psychiatric ward of the hospital.

Police said they didn't receive the 911 call until about 2:20 a.m., but a neighbor of the family said he phoned police at 10:30 p.m.

The child's mother is not in custody and not involved in the death of the baby.

The father is facing charges of murder.

Police continue to investigate, and the issue of the 911 call remains uncertain.

• April 28, 2006: Infant Found Dead In Yard On East Side

Questions hover at funeral for man accused of burning girlfriend

By Rochelle E.B. Gilken Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Sunday, April 30, 2006

RIVIERA BEACH — The man they called "Big L" lived for 49 years as a nice, quiet, easygoing guy.

A truck driver with a big family, he was laid to rest in a silver casket Saturday in a distinguished suit and hat, his graying beard neatly trimmed.

This is how about 200 people remembered Lester Parson. At a Jehovah's Witnesses ceremony in the gymnasium at John F. Kennedy Middle School, they sat in bleachers and chairs in front of a casket under a basketball net.

They paid respects to a man who they said didn't get into trouble, didn't drink or smoke or talk much. The son of a carpenter, he was a 1974 Suncoast High School graduate who loved trucks and drove one for the Serta mattress company. A man who suddenly snapped — then died with charges of attempted murder and arson on his mind.

On April 4, the man with no criminal record, with no history of violence, was suddenly accused of doing something cruel.

Parson visited his girlfriend as she worked an overnight shift at a Mobil gas station in Riviera Beach. He bought some gas and doused Tanya Hughey, 38, with it. He lit a match.

On April 22 he was in the Palm Beach County Jail infirmary with severe burns on his hands and arms from the attack. He developed a blood clot that traveled from his leg to his lungs, and he died.

Hughey is still alive, with third-degree burns over 90 percent of her body.

Parson — a son, brother and friend — died despite his relatively minor injuries.

"Life is uncertain," said Walter Embry, who delivered the service at Parson's funeral, "because you never know what's going to happen to you the next day."

In the funeral program, Parson was memorialized with a trucker's poem:

Come on and join our convoy BIG "L"

Ain't nothing gonna get in our way

We gonna roll this convoy across the FLA

This is Big "L" on the side we gone Bye-Bye

We'll catch you on the Flip Flop

Ten-Four Good Buddy

In the more than six years that Parson dated Hughey, their families grew close. Hughey's siblings and younger children planned to attend Parson's funeral — not out of hate, but out of respect for Parson's mother and family and even Hughey.

"That is what Tanya would want if she was here," said her brother, Andre Cohen, of Riviera Beach.

But none of them made it. Hughey's kidneys failed Friday night and she was put on dialysis. The last of her siblings flew in from Chicago to say goodbye. She was still holding on Saturday night.

"I didn't want to leave my sister," Cohen said. "I want to spend every minute I can with her while she's still here."

Cohen said he would've wanted the chance to ask Parson why he did it. He wanted to tell him that his sister didn't deserve what happened to her.

After the burial at Royal Palm Memorial Gardens in West Palm Beach, Embry said: "The only thing I can dwell on is what he was. There are some questions you can never answer."

Girl's brother testifies father fatally beat her

By Jeff Coen Tribune staff reporter - April 26, 2006

Testifying against his father, Leon Slack whipped a piece of electrical cord across a bed frame in the courtroom. The cord, he said, was like the one his father used to beat Slack's sister to death.

Jurors watched as Slack repeatedly slapped the cord, demonstrating how he said his father struck his sister more than 100 times after she was tied to the same frame in November 2001.

Laree Slack had screamed out, her brother said, but their father, Larry Slack, stuck a towel in her mouth to muffle her.

Leon Slack, now 21, testified in Cook County Criminal Court on the first day of Larry Slack's trial in the murder of 12-year-old Laree. Leon Slack said his father routinely beat him and his five brothers and sisters with electrical cords.

"You felt it not only in your back, but in the front of your chest," Slack said. He then described the force his father used--like "you were hammering a nail into wood."

Larry Slack and his wife, Constance, were charged in the case after paramedics responded to a 911 call from the house in the 7900 block of South Brandon Avenue, Chicago.

Prosecutors have said the couple were strict Jehovah's Witnesses who practiced corporal punishment.

Constance Slack has pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and is expected to testify against her husband, who faces the same charge.

On Tuesday, Assistant State's Atty. Meg Blade told jurors the facts of the case are so horrible that justice demands a guilty verdict.

Assistant Public Defender Denise Streff urged the panel not to let sympathy sway them. Larry Slack did not intend to kill his daughter, Streff said.

The couple loved their children but did whip them as a form of discipline, just as their own parents had, Streff said. Larry Slack worked as a Chicago Transit Authority machinist and Constance Slack worked as a nurse.

"It got out of hand," Streff said of the discipline. "It absolutely got out of hand."

UPDATE on Slack: - Jury convicts dad of whipping girl to death

April 28, 2006 - BY STEFANO ESPOSITO Staff Reporter

After flogging his 12-year-old daughter to death with an electrical cable, a somber Larry Slack told investigators he was disgusted with what he'd done.

On that point at least, a Cook County jury appeared to agree with the man prosecutors called a "sick and sadistic" tyrant. In less than three hours of deliberating Thursday, the jury convicted Slack, 46, of first-degree murder in the death of Laree Slack on Nov. 11, 2001, at the family's South Side home.

"When they showed the autopsy pictures of [Laree's] body after she was dissected, that was enough to really turn your stomach," said juror Tom Sullivan.

Slack, sitting with his elbows on the table in front of him and his fingers interlocked, bowed his head when the verdict was read but otherwise displayed no emotion. The jury also found Slack guilty of aggravated battery to a child in the beating of Laree's younger brother, Lester Slack.

During closing arguments, prosecutors told jurors that Larry Slack was someone who would inflict pain on a whim and was eager to beat Laree Slack the night she died.

"The penalty for crossing this guy -- no matter for what silly thing -- was torture," Cook County assistant state's attorney Ted Lagerwall told the jury.

When he beat Laree -- who was tied to a bare metal futon frame and gagged -- he did so "over and over and over again," Lagerwall said.

The beating started because Laree and her five siblings had been unable to find a lost credit card. The beating continued because Larry Slack was furious that Laree wouldn't take the beating quietly, prosecutors say.

"Ladies and gentleman, that isn't discipline," Lagerwall said. "That isn't corporal punishment. That's murder."

Denise Streff, one of Slack's attorneys, argued that what her client had done was wrong, but he isn't a "sadistic killer."

"Mr. Slack did not intend to kill his daughter," Streff said. "He knew it was bad . . . but he had no idea Laree wasn't going to get up and be OK."

Faces 20 years to life in prison

She reminded jurors that Slack was so upset when he realized he'd killed his daughter that he tried to commit suicide.

In his videotaped statement to prosecutors played in court Thursday, the corpulent Slack said, "I bought [a knife] for the purposes of killing myself. I hid it under the fat folds of my stomach."

But prosecutors asked jurors not to be distracted by the suicide attempt, calling it self-serving.

Cook County assistant state's attorney Rick Cenar told jurors they only had to find Slack intended to inflict "great bodily harm" to convict him of first-degree murder.

"This was a crime involving torture," Cenar said. "This was a house of pain. This was a house of torture. The king of pain is right over there."

Sentencing is set for June 1. He faces 20 years to life in prison, Cenar said.

Man slaughters family - Update

April 13, 2006

from : http://www.ogrish.com/archives/man_slaughters_family_update_Apr_13_2006.html

loy Leon Kings was, apparently, a well liked and respected man in his local community. A devout Jehovah's Witness, he was a regular churchgoer and apparently a loving husband and father. There were no obvious signs to the outside world that something appeared to be going wrong with Mr Kings.

After awaking early one Thursday morning he read from his bible, took a knife, and set about trying to murder his family. His first victim, 8 year old Lucia, dies from having her throat cut. As she lay bleeding to death he then went after his wife, also named Lucia, whom he repeatedly stabbed. He then cut the throats of his remaining two daughters, 5 year old Dana and 6 year old Light. Light survived the attack but is, as of this writing, still under critical care for severe neck wounds.

Following his rampage Mr Kings turned the knife on himself, sawing into his throat. However, he suffered only minor damage to the skin and subcutaneous layers . The frantic Mr Kings had to be heavily tranquilised by doctors before they could treat his self inflicted injuries.

Investigators have been trying to piece together why Mr Kings would suddenly attempt to murder his whole family. Under interrogation Mr Kings would only reply with religious verse about Satan and how he wanted to “Take his family to paradise”.

Eloy Leon Kings

________________________________________

http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-canambrose0203.artfeb03,0,7510368.story?coll=hc-headlines-local

Injured Woman's Husband Arraigned

By TOM PULEO

Courant Staff Writer

February 3 2006

CANTON -- Joseph V. Ambrose smashed his wife's face and skull with a pipe early Monday and told her she was "going to die tonight" before he left her outside a hospital and drove away, court records released Thursday state.

But the police report offers no reason Ambrose - a self-employed carpenter and elder in the Canton congregation of the Jehovah's Witnesses - attacked his wife inside their rented home.

She is recovering from her injuries. He was arraigned Thursday on attempted murder, first-degree assault and first-degree kidnapping charges and held with bail set at $750,000.

He was ordered to have no contact with his wife or their four children should he make bail. He is due back in Superior Court in Hartford on Feb. 16.

Court records state that the couple had separated, but still was living at 93 Old Canton Road and sleeping in different bedrooms.

Ambrose, 55, lured his wife out of her room early Monday by telling her she had a phone call, then pummeled her, leaving multiple lacerations on her face and head, the report states.

Robin Ambrose, 41, remains at Hartford Hospital and the couple's two youngest children who were living at home are now in state custody, authorities said.

Ambrose eluded police for more than a day but was captured Tuesday morning, walking near the Canton-New Hartford line and carrying a loaded gun.

Robin Ambrose gave police the following account: She remembers her husband striking her hard on the head, saying he had a pipe and was going to "kill her." The next thing she remembers is waking up alone in her minivan outside the house, her blood "everywhere."

Robin Ambrose opened the minivan door, triggering the alarm, causing her husband to run out of the house to the van. At this time, Ambrose told his wife she was "going to die but I have to take you away from here."

Robin Ambrose asked her husband to take her to the hospital. The next thing she remembers is waking up inside Hartford Hospital, the report says. She doesn't remember walking into the building.

In 2003, police went to the Ambrose house during a "physical altercation" between Ambrose and his young son, the police report says.

________________________________________

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

Jehovah's Witness shoots wife, self

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005

A Bible-thumping Bronx man gunned down his estranged wife and then killed himself after accusing her of straying from their faith and sleeping with another man, police and neighbors said yesterday.

The victim's 21-year-old daughter found the bloodbath at 10:30 a.m. yesterday in her mother's Soundview apartment after the woman failed to show up to work as an Avon sales representative, neighbors said.

Sharoll Medina, 39, was sprawled on her bed with a gunshot wound to her head. Her estranged husband, Julio Lopez, 45, lay dead nearby with a revolver beside him, police said. "My mother! My mother!" her daughter screamed as she walked out of the Watson Ave. building.

Lopez and Medina, both Jehovah's Witnesses, separated about 18 months ago. But Lopez would often show up unannounced at Medina's fifth-floor apartment, neighbors said.

She routinely refused to let him inside, but rather than go away he would sleep in his truck. Their fighting got worse when Lopez found out Medina was dating another man - and he later argued with her about it, neighbors said.

Rich Schapiro and Alison Gendar

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/361673p-307958c.html

Victim's family dresses down murderer

By Laurel J. Sweet

Saturday, July 16, 2005 - Updated: 09:20 AM EST

http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=94081

Thomas Gillespie addresses his sister's

murderous husband Kevin Hensley during

victim impact statements.

(Staff photo by Ted Fitzgerald)

A bitter brother-in-law of the mild-mannered monster who pinned his sister face down while he strangled her with a necktie wanted to see Kevin Hensley off to prison in style yesterday.

``I notice you don't have a tie on,'' Thomas Gillespie, his voice crackling with sarcasm, told Hensley, 49, who once attempted suicide. ``You know what? I brought one for you.''

Hensley - who was a tow truck driver for the Boston Transportation Department when he murdered his wife, Nancy Hensley, 45, in their East Boston bedroom Jan. 31, 2002 - had planned to speak at his mandatory sentencing to life behind bars. But crushed by the weight of his family's grief, he backed down.

After deliberating only two hours, a jury convicted Hensley of first-degree murder Thursday - the same day his daughter Candace Hensley turned 14.

The Hensleys had four children during their 22 years of marriage: daughters Candace and Kerry, 24, and sons Pat, 22, and Kevin, 10.

``They're beautiful kids,'' Maryann Gillespie, the aunt who took them in, told their father in her gut-wrenching good riddance. ``They deserve the best, and we'll have that for them.

``I wish you had come to us for help,'' she told Hensley, whose slain wife was her husband Robert Gillespie's sister. ``We would have been there for you, but there's nothing we can do now.''

Kevin and Nancy Hensley, Jehovah's Witnesses, had been separated only a couple of weeks when he beat and choked her to death and then dumped her body beside a toilet in the basement - what prosecutor Dennis Collins called the ``final indignity.''

The couple's religion teaches that men run the home and women are to be subservient, but while Kevin Hensley was a homebody, family members said Nancy, a working mom, wanted to spread her wings.

``My sister lived for her children. She loved them dearly,'' Karen Nolan told Hensley. ``She would have been proud of each one of them for how they've handled this.

``Unfortunately, this state doesn't have the death penalty yet for animals like you, Kevin, so the best I can hope for is that you live a long and miserable life.''

________________________________________

March 26, 2005

Sexual Abuse, Armageddon and Drugs

A powder keg ignited by P

New Zealand Herald - New Zealand

... The only remaining father figures in Dixon's life were Jehovah's Witnesses, one of whom on several occasions took Dixon on outings and sexually abused him

A powder keg ignited by P

Antonie Dixon's long but small-time criminal career culminated in a frenzy of violence and death.

26.03.05

by Louisa Cleave and Bronwyn Sell

From the age of 4 or 5, Antonie Dixon was dragged by his mother to Jehovah's Witness meetings. He was forced to sit for hours in meeting halls, go door-to-door with her as she preached, read the Bible every day before school.

He grew up with tales of fire and brimstone, of demons and devils, of a new world order, of Armageddon and how the sinners of the world would be wiped out.

At the age of 34, after a month-long P binge, he started his own Armageddon. He sliced off the right hand of his girlfriend Renee Gunbie and the left hand of former girlfriend Simonne Butler with a samurai sword in the Hauraki Plains village of Pipiroa, and then shot dead a stranger, James Te Aute, in Pakuranga, later raving to police, witnesses and psychiatrists that the women were immoral and Te Aute was the devil.

He claimed to have drunk blood from Gunbie's severed hand. He claimed his father was the offspring of angels. He claimed to see dancing goblins and hanging vampires.

Butler says Dixon yelled during the ordeal at Pipiroa, "that his God had told him he had to sacrifice me and we were all going to die and the New World was taking over".

Whether they were the ramblings of an insane man or a cynical- and ultimately unsuccessful - strategy to secure a trial verdict of not guilty by insanity, it wasn't hard to trace his inspiration.

"It was pretty intense," his sister, Carla Dixon-Foxley, says of their late mother's beliefs. "There was a lot of talk of demons and being possessed by the devil, Armageddon and not being good enough to obtain ever-lasting life."

Dixon had been involved in crime since he was 15. By the time he picked up the samurai sword, he had 160 convictions. It was mostly petty stuff - stolen cars, theft and driving offences - and a few assaults.

Police officers who had dealt with him for two decades had suspected his crime spree might escalate. But they hadn't expected something so extreme.

"I always thought he had the potential to kill but not in this way. This was quite out there," says Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Gutry, who was working in the Howick criminal investigation branch while Dixon was living in Beachlands in his 20s and early 30s.

While Dixon was a career criminal, one police officer said he was also likeable and charming. He'd had at least two serious, albeit tumultuous, relationships, which survived several prison terms. He had two children with his former partner for 10 years, Wendy Ross.

Ross and Simone Butler both say Dixon was charming. Ross says he had a "contagious personality". But both became aware of a darker side as their respective relationships progressed.

Butler and Dixon split in March 2002 but remained friends. Dixon took up with Gunbie, Butler's childhood friend and a P cook. Gunbie moved into the Pipiroa property in October that year.

Police who dealt with Dixon are confident they know exactly what turned him from a troubled petty criminal who aspired to notoriety into a homicidal madman: the drug P, a pure form of methamphetamine.

He wasn't crazy, a former police officer told the Weekend Herald. He just "lost it one night on P".

Dixon, who was a cannabis user, had drifted into P through his associations with gangs, says Detective Sergeant Darryl Brazier.

Brazier said Dixon phoned him three or four times a day in the months leading up to January 21, 2003, and admitted he was "fried" - a common term for regular P users.

Police say it changed his behaviour. It ignited his long-held paranoia and drew out the violence that had characterised his childhood.

In the 1970s, Richmond Rd, Grey Lynn, wasn't the trendy, upmarket street it is now. It was rough, especially inside Dixon's childhood home, which doubled as a boarding house for psychiatric patients released from Oakley and Carrington Hospitals.

Their mother, Isabelle, ran the house, administering medication to the boarders and the rod to her children, Dixon's sister says.

"She beat us. We were all scared of her. She used to lock Tony in the toilet for hours at a time. She would sit him on the potty with no pants on and leave him in the cold."

Dixon was tied to the washing line, chained up with padlocks and locked in his room with bars on the windows.

Dixon-Foxley, who is nine years older than her brother and now lives in London, remembers him as a child sitting on the couch and banging his head for hours, rocking. "He was always a bit strange."

Their father, Ronald, was violent to their mother. When Dixon was 7 they separated and he was forbidden by the courts from coming near the family. He died in Wellington three years later from heart problems, at the age of 53.

The only remaining father figures in Dixon's life were Jehovah's Witnesses, one of whom on several occasions took Dixon on outings and sexually abused him, Dixon-Foxley told his High Court trial.

He was forbidden from playing with other children because his mother didn't want him associating with non-believers.

Dixon rebelled. He would get frustrated and throw tantrums. And he was no longer a small boy who could be locked in the toilet.

"He had to be held down," Dixon-Foxley says. "It was uncontrollable, not unlike my father's temper. He'd get very angry. Unreasonable. Illogical. He would hit out. He grew up in an environment of violence and that's all he knew."

By 10 he was wagging school, and had to be dragged home from spacies parlours. Around that time he started to turn the violence back on to his mother.

"He was constantly in trouble," Dixon-Foxley says. "Once he started the truancy he was basically in homes. Home after home after home."

Their mother gave up. She made him a ward of the state. He lived in halfway houses, boys' homes, foster homes, institutions, borstals. About then he started breaking the law.

At 15 he was convicted of burglary and receiving property, although he was admonished and returned to state care. Thus began his 20-year crime spree.

Most police officers the Weekend Herald spoke to said he was not known as a violent offender. He craved notoriety but it proved elusive - until January 21, 2003.

Dixon seemed to enjoy dramatic run-ins with police - especially car chases. Before the samurai attacks his biggest claim to infamy was slipping out of a prison van in Auckland in 1994 after being charged with orchestrating a major car theft ring. He was on the run for more than a month. He called the New Zealand Herald while in hiding to say he expected the police would catch him.

A few years later he climbed through a skylight at the Tauranga police station after being arrested for a crime spree involving high-speed car chases in four stolen vehicles.

"I think he loved the whole car chase, almost a Dukes of Hazzard type," Gutry says.

Brazier says Dixon always wanted to be somebody more important, but the gangs considered him risky, probably because of his big-noting.

"As much as he wanted to be accepted in the criminal scene, a lot of the upper-echelon criminals didn't want him. You would mention his name and they would roll their eyes and say 'He's a would be if he could be'. He wanted to be the big man around town."

Detective Inspector Bernie Hollewand, the officer in the charge of the inquiry, says Dixon used violence "instrumentally" within the criminal scene.

Dixon had a "coterie of henchmen". His "business" was disposing of high-performance vehicles and he associated with several gangs, from the Headhunters to the Mongrel Mob.

"He wouldn't have wanted to be associated too closely with any one particular gang ... his business was best served by being in contact with all the gangs and knowing who was doing the business around the place," says Hollewand.

He agrees that Dixon wanted to be big. "He wants to be top dog, he wants to be doing Tony's business not anyone else's business."

His campaign for notoriety involved regular contact with police. A former police officer says Dixon would drive to the Howick police station, park his car alongside patrol cars and wander inside to chat.

"He's a friendly guy - very confident, very cocky. He had no problem talking to cops, because he thought he was too clever for us and was never going to get caught."

It seems a contradiction, but while Dixon was actively courting police, he was also paranoid they had him under electronic surveillance. He would beg Brazier to call off this imagined surveillance.

Brazier said Dixon's paranoia was a symptom of heavy P use - as was the violence that erupted.

"It is common for a heavy user to believe people are out to get them, whether it be police or other people in the drug scene."

In the months before his violent explosion, Dixon seemed convinced that the authorities were using 747s, bugs and satellites to monitor him.

He had painted slogans on the walls of his house and the road, saying, "my life is in danger" and "home of the satellite 747 and every other thing in the sky".

Detective Senior Sergeant Richard Middleton said Dixon's P use exaggerated his paranoia and made him more grandiose.

Brazier advised Dixon in the months before January 21, 2003, to seek help for his addiction.

"[Dixon's crime spree] is a result of P," says Gutry. "The levels of violence are so much more extreme.

"We're just seeing a lot of people who, when they get addicted to P, become extremely violent, unpredictable; who were otherwise not really violent people."

On January 21, 2003, Dixon finally lost control. Everything that had been haunting him for the past 34 years came to a head - the paranoia, the violence, the drugs, the two decades of crime, the run-ins with police, the cravings for notoriety.

"His personality was the powder keg and P was the match that lit it," Crown prosecutor Simon Moore said in court.

Things didn't go to plan for Dixon on January 21, 2003. He didn't want to go back to jail. He wanted to "go down in a blaze of glory", shot dead by police.

"I've gone too far," Dixon told Brazier that night, after mutilating the women and before killing Te Aute. "I've chopped them both and I'd have killed them if the sword hadn't broken." But in his warped mind, there was one consolation.

He told police: "Everyone will be taking notice of me now."

24 hours of violence

8.30am, January 21, 2003 Renee Gunbie prepares a cocktail of orange juice, cocaine and methamphetamine at the Pipiroa home she shares with boyfriend Antonie Ronnie Dixon. He drinks most of it.

2pm. Dixon breaks Gunbie's arm. His violent spree has begun.

7pm. His former girlfriend Simonne Butler arrives. Gunbie has been badly beaten. Dixon attacks the women with a samurai sword.

7.30pm. He calls an ambulance and drives to Hamilton, where he steals a car. He speeds erratically to Auckland. He taunts police over his mobile phone. "I'm not going to go to jail. This is going to be another Aramoana."

Midnight. He drives into Dunrobin Place, Highland Park, and finds three men in a car. He taunts them, draws them closer, then shoots dead James Te Aute. Dixon drives away, pursued by the men's friend, Steven Matthews, who was parked nearby. Dixon raises his gun at Matthews, who ducks and loses control of his car. Dixon threatens staff and customers at gunpoint at a Mobil station in Highland Park and a Shell station in Pakuranga.

12.30am. Dixon picks up a stranger, Bradley Kukard, in Howick and tells him he has killed a man. He drops him off and is chased by two police officers but escapes.

1am. A police officer spots Dixon's car in Rialto Court, Botany Downs, and chases him to Inchinnam Rd, East Tamaki. Dixon bursts into the house of Ian Miller, taking him hostage.

5.30am. After long conversations with Miller and police negotiators, Dixon releases Miller.

6.15am. Dixon leaves the house and lies on the lawn, surrendering.

________________________________________

03/17/2005

Greist speaks out at hearing

R. JONATHAN TULEYA , Staff Writer

http://www.dailylocal.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=14164496&BRD=1671&PAG=461&dept_id=17782&rfi=6

WEST CHESTER -- Richard L. Greist ended decades of silence Wednesday when the institutionalized killer took the witness stand during his annual recommitment hearing.

The former East Coventry resident found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity lamented killing his wife and unborn son in 1978, quoted verses from the Bible and apologized to his two daughters.

But his daughters’ own testimony overshadowed Greist’s -- recounting in explicit detail their father’s rampage that nearly killed them.

"My sister and I love him very much, and we forgive him," said Elizabeth Ann Butts, 32, Greist’s older daughter. But they asked the court not to release Greist, "not now or ever."

Angela Dykie, 31, the killer’s other daughter, agreed her father should remain committed to a mental hospital for the rest of his life.

Dykie described Greist’s "searing slaps" and the "screams of terror" as he beat and stabbed the members of his family.

"He had fiery orange and green swirling eyes," Dykie testified. "They were empty and the most evil thing I’ve ever seen."

Greist, now 53, stabbed his wife, Janice, to death and mutilated their 8-month-old unborn fetus -- which he said he has named Christopher -- in the family’s home on May 10, 1978.

He also attacked Butts, who was 6 at the time, Dykie, who was 5, and the girls’ 71-year-old great-grandmother, Anna Gresko.

Two years later at trial, Common Pleas Court Judge Thomas A. Pitt Jr. ruled Greist not guilty by reason of insanity.

He was committed to Norristown State Hospital, where he remains today.

By law, Greist is entitled to a recommitment hearing every year. For years, Greist has attempted at these hearings to gain his release from the mental hospital.

Wednesday he tried again before Common Pleas Court Judge Edward Griffith. The judge will make a ruling at a later date.

Greist and his attorney, Marita M. Hutchinson, seek to have Greist moved from Norristown State Hospital to a less restrictive facility known as community residential rehabilitation.

"I wish from my very soul that I could take back the time in the 1970s," Greist said, "and have my wife Janice and my children back."

The killer claimed he is "well and I have been for a long time." He apologized for the "pain" he caused Butts and Dykie, and recalled the "sweet smell of their hair after shampooing it."

"I only have a few photos of my daughters," Greist said. "They are among my most precious possessions."

He also testified remorsefully about not being able to teach Christopher how to "sail my yacht, like I had taught the girls."

Dr. Sudhir Stokes, the psychiatrist in charge of Greist’s treatment at Norristown, has treated Greist for three years and supported the patient’s appeal for more freedom.

"All people, including Mr. Greist, have to be given the chance to move to the next level," Stokes said.

Greist’s privileges at the hospital have progressed to the point where he is now allowed to roam freely on the hospital’s 40-acre compound.

Since the slayings, Greist has become a Jehovah’s Witness. He is allowed to leave the hospital for three hours every week to attend services in West Norristown.

The man also is granted one 12-hour leave every three months, which he has used to go shopping at the King of Prussia Mall, and he often travels alone using public transportation to visit physicians located off the hospital property.

Greist holds a job at the hospital as manager of the facility’s cafeteria, and on Nov. 29, he married his third wife, Frances Greist, a New Zealand woman he met on the Internet through a Jehovah’s Witness Web site.

Assistant District Attorney Peter Hobart argued against any change to Greist’s commitment status.

Hobart called upon Dr. Barbara E. Ziv, a forensic psychiatrist, and psychologist Steven E. Samuel, to testify the man still posed a risk to the community.

"Richard Greist has talked in very concerning ways about all the women in his life," Ziv said. She concluded he has demonstrated a "high degree of misogyny and anti-female resentment."

Samuel examined Greist twice during January.

"He has not developed any insight into the basis of what happened in 1978," Samuel said. "I think he is bothered by intense emotional feelings, he is frightened by them in a way. He consciously covers over his problems to minimize his weaknesses."

________________________________________

Posted on Thu, Mar. 17, 2005

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/11156681.htm

At hearing, a killer's daughters relive horror

The children of Richard Greist, who slaughtered family members in '78, say he should not be released to a group home.

By Kathleen Brady Shea

Inquirer Staff Writer

The brutal horrors that befell an East Coventry Township family on May 10, 1978, were painfully relived yesterday by two witnesses to the bloodshed: the daughters of Richard Greist.

Greist, 53, was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1980 of crimes that included fatally stabbing his pregnant wife, ripping his unborn son from her womb, mutilating the fetus, gouging the eye of his 6-year-old daughter, slashing his grandmother's throat, and butchering the family cat.

Because a judge ruled that Greist could not be held responsible for his crimes, he can never be incarcerated for them.

The daughters, both of whom are married, came forward after learning that the staff at Norristown State Hospital, Greist's primary residence since his arrest, continue to seek greater freedom for their father.

Neither believes Greist should be released to a group home - as the hospital staff has recommended - and both read letters, with visible difficulty, at Greist's annual commitment hearing in Chester County Court.

Elizabeth Anna Butts, 32, who lost an eye during the attack, said she is reminded of it every day when she looks in the mirror.

"I wish my father no harm," she said. "I don't believe he intentionally harmed me; that's what's scary."

Butts said the love of God and family has helped her regain some semblance of a normal life, which would be shattered if she had to start worrying about running into her father at the grocery store.

Echoing the testimony of two experts hired by the commonwealth, psychiatrist Barbara Ziv and psychologist Steven E. Samuel, Butts said the fact that doctors do not know why the psychotic episode happened suggests that no one can be sure it will not recur.

Her younger sister, Angela Dykie, 31, said she would be forever haunted by "the sounds of hard thumps, searing slaps, deadly stabs, moans of pain, screams of terror, and wails of horror."

She said that after being thrown across the kitchen into a coal bucket, she escaped across the street where she watched her mother come out "in a body bag" and her sister come out "clinging to life, expected to die."

Dykie said her father "manipulated" her into seeing him when she was 18, and the experience made her "hit rock bottom" and consider ending her life. She said she was not surprised when Greist's second wife, Patricia, committed suicide after a year of marriage.

After her death, she said, her father pressured her "to testify for his freedom," arguing that he had no one else to support him.

"I pushed him away," said Dykie. "When I did that, my life came back to normal."

A different view was presented by Frances Greist, his third wife.

She testified that she met Greist in June on the Internet, in a chat room for Jehovah's Witnesses. She said she traveled from New Zealand to Norristown on Nov. 11 and married Greist on Nov. 29.

"He's a darling," she said, adding that the two hope to relocate to New Zealand.

Asked by Assistant District Attorney Peter Hobart about the particulars of the assault, she said Greist "was trying to save the baby in his own way" when he ripped the fetus from his wife's body.

Greist, who covered his face with his hands during his daughters' testimony, also addressed the court during the daylong hearing, describing fond parenthood memories, such as the smell of the girls' freshly shampooed hair.

"My dreams were also shattered on that horrific day," he said.

Greist said he wished he could change the past, which was destroyed by his mental illness, and wants to change the future.

"I have so much love to give my daughters," he said.

Hobart said Greist's daughters requested that the court be informed that they want no contact with their father.

"You saw chillingly, the effect he has on his daughters," said Hobart, who urged Chester County Court Judge Edward Griffith not to lift any restrictions.

Greist's attorney, Marita Malloy Hutchinson, asked Griffith to "follow the recommendation" of Greist's hospital treatment team, led by psychiatrist Sudhir Stokes, and explore "a less restrictive environment" for her client.

Before taking the case under advisement, the judge addressed Greist.

"If you really do care about [your daughters], I think it would be best if you had no contact with them," Griffith said.

Greist replied that he agreed.

________________________________________

1992 murder conviction is upheld

By Barbara Bell

Special to the Tribune

Published December 4, 2004

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/chi-0412040178dec04,1,3774551.story?coll=chi-newslocalchicago-hed

William Carlson's request to have his murder conviction thrown out was denied Friday by a Lake County judge, but Carlson said he plans to appeal.

Carlson, 30, who represented himself at a hearing before Associate Circuit Judge John Phillips, said he deserved a new trial because of problems with the indictment charging him with first-degree murder in the 1990 shooting deaths of his parents.

"It's specifically an attack on the validity of the indictment," Carlson said.

Carlson pleaded guilty in 1992 to killing his father in their Wildwood house. He is serving a 90-year sentence in Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet.

In a plea deal, Carlson avoided a life sentence when prosecutors dropped murder charges in connection with his mother's slaying. But Carlson's sentence for his father's death was extended because the crime was considered heinous and brutal, authorities said.

Carlson argued that because the "heinous and brutal" accusation was not mentioned in the grand jury indictment, it was flawed.

Assistant State's Atty. Jeff Pavletic said Carlson pleaded guilty to killing his father, so his argument did not apply. Carlson waived his rights to a jury trial when he entered the plea, Pavletic said.

Phillips agreed.

"I am going to deny you the relief you request," he told Carlson.

Pavletic said prosecutors were never sure what motivated Carlson, then 16, to kill his parents with a handgun he rented for $100 from classmates at Warren Township High School.

"That was the $64,000 question at the time," Pavletic said. Carlson feared getting in trouble with his father because he had sold some of his father's gold collection, and his parents were Jehovah's Witnesses, the prosecutor said.

A defense psychiatrist said Carlson had been sexually and mentally abused by his parents. But Pavletic doubted that Carlson was mentally ill because he plotted to kill his parents and returned the gun before fleeing to Canada in his parents' car.

"All of those things supported that this wasn't a person who didn't understand the acts he had committed," Pavletic said.

________________________________________

12/03/2004

Wedding bells ring again for wife killer

Carl Hessler Jr.

NORRISTOWN -- Institution-alized wife killer Richard L. Greist Jr. tied the knot again this week.

Greist’s third attempt at wedded bliss comes 26 years after he brutally stabbed his first wife to death and 13 years after his second wife committed suicide.

Montgomery County Court records obtained by The Mercury show Greist, now 53 and a resident of Norristown State Hos-pital, married 46-year-old Norristown resident Frances Mary More on Nov. 29. District Justice Francis Lawrence Jr. presided over the marriage ceremony at his Norristown office, according to Orphans Court records.

"They wrote their own vows. They exchanged their rings. It was literally three minutes long," said Lawrence, describing the simple ceremony. "It was a standard civil ceremony."

About seven people accompanied Greist and More to the ceremony.

Hospital officials referred all questions regarding the marriage to the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, which operates the hospital.

Stacey Ward, a spokesperson for the state agency, confirmed that Greist got married. However, Ward said patient confidentiality regulations prohibited her from discussing the matter in more detail.

An attempt to reach Greist through state officials was unsuccessful. More, who according to court documents was born in New Zealand, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Greist’s lawyer, Marita Malloy Hutchinson of West Chester, did not return a phone call for comment about her client’s nuptials.

Chester County Assistant District Attorney Peter Hobart, who currently represents the state during required annual court hearings to monitor Greist’s mental health treatment and progress, said he was not aware of the marriage. Greist was not required to report the marriage to prosecutors.

Hobart added that a psychiatrist, Dr. Barbara Ziv, has been hired by prosecutors to re-evaluate Greist prior to his next scheduled annual hearing on Jan. 25.

"I’m sure she’ll take any relevant life changes and the marriage into consideration at that time," said Hobart, referring to Ziv. In court documents, Greist listed his occupation as a cashier. More listed her occupation as a tutor and indicated she lived on East Poplar Street in Norristown.

On May 10, 1978, Greist, then 27, went berserk and fatally stabbed his pregnant wife, Janice, cutting an 8-month-old male fetus from her body inside their Sanatoga Road home in East Coventry. During the 2 p.m. rampage, Greist also attacked his 6-year-old daughter, Beth Ann, who lost an eye during the savage attack, and beat his 71-year-old grandmother, Anna Gresko.

Greist was found not guilty by reason of insanity of the strangulation and stabbing of his wife after a trial in Chester County Court on Aug. 1, 1980. A psychiatrist testified at the trial that Greist believed he was the incarnation of Jesus Christ and thought he was killing devils when he attacked his family. The psychiatrist testified Greist believed all women had the devil in them and that he believed he could kill the devil in his wife, then resurrect her.

The verdict means Greist will never face a prison sentence for the crime. He was committed to the state hospital for treatment until doctors determine he is sane and no longer a threat to society or to himself. During the last two decades, Greist has made no attempt to hide the fact he has had girlfriends during his stay at the hospital. In May 1990, Greist, after being institutionalized for 12 years, married Patricia Louise Griffin, 38, a former psychiatric nurse at the hospital, during a private ceremony on the grounds of the hospital. During an interview at the time of the nuptials, Griffin said she was not bothered by her husband’s past and said she was looking forward to a good marriage.

Patricia Greist told court officials she felt comfortable with her husband and described him as a stabilizing influence on her life.

However, on May 31, 1991, Patricia Greist, a year into the couple’s marriage, was found dead of an apparent drug overdose in her Norristown home, various pills surrounding her body. Authorities said she left several suicide notes that were generally supportive of her husband.

Each year since 1981, Greist has asked for freedom and more privileges during annual competency hearings at which a Chester County judge must review Greist’s progress.

During the most recent hearing in March, former county Judge Juan R. Sanchez, now on the federal bench, ordered that Greist remain at the hospital, denying doctor’s requests that Greist be transferred to a less restrictive community residential rehabilitation center.

Under court orders, Greist is permitted to attend services every Sunday at a Norristown area Jehovah’s Witnesses church. He is also allowed to attend "planned outings" four times a year if it is approved by the hospital and written plans are submitted to the district attorney’s office and local police departments.

Greist is forbidden from staying away from the hospital overnight.

________________________________________

BOOK REVIEW: BLOOD CRIMES

Over the last few years there have been some quite sensational national news cases in the U.S. that involve a Jehovah's Witness male murdering part of all of his family or people close to him. Why? The following are some recent comments and findings by Bill Bowen of Silentlambs:

The picture above is of the South Carolina corner removing the bodies of the Meza children.

You can read the full story at this link,

http://www.silentlambs.org/SCmurderarticles.htm

The South Carolina case of a Jehovah’s Witness father murdering his wife and children appears to be an ongoing problem that seems to occur when JW fathers become emotionally disturbed. To understand the reason why this phenomena presents itself you must understand the theology of the religion itself. Anyone that becomes a Jehovah’s Witness must accept that they are part of the only “truth.” That “truth” is defined as being the only persons on earth that are approved by God. To find corroboration of that, note the following quotes from JW literature,

” Become members of an international brotherhood known for cleanness and good manners, the worldwide congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses. In harmony with Ephesians 4:24, these sincere Christians have “put on the new personality which was created according to God’s will in true righteousness and loyalty.” Soon the world will be filled with such people because these will be the only ones who will survive and live forever.” Watchtower99 6/15 page 6

" Is it presumptuous of Jehovah’s Witnesses to point out that they alone have God’s backing? Actually, no more so than when the Israelites in Egypt claimed to have God’s backing in spite of the Egyptians’ belief, or when the first-century Christians claimed to have God’s backing to the exclusion of Jewish religionists." Watchtower 01 6/1 page 16

“ Of all the organizations claiming to be Christian, only Jehovah’s Witnesses both think upon his name and magnify it among the nations.” Watchtower 92 12/1 page 17

”The message is clear: If we want to survive Armageddon , we must remain spiritually alert and keep the symbolic garments that identify us as faithful Witnesses of Jehovah God .” Watchtower 99 12/1 page18

As you can see from the material Jehovah’s Witnesses believe they have the only path to surviving the end of the world. Anyone that does not become part of that path will be killed by God at the battle of Armageddon. The belief continues that Armageddon is immanent and the only way to help mankind survive is to allow them the opportunity to become Jehovah’s Witnesses by calling on the homes of the public and inviting them to become members through home bible studies. Any member that does not participate in this “preaching work,” will be killed by God at Armageddon.

What happens after Armageddon? The earth will be given to Jehovah’s Witnesses to cultivate into a garden like park they call the “paradise earth.” The function of the paradise earth will be for humans to be returned to perfection by God and live eternally in human bodies while cultivating it as a beautiful place to live. In addition, according to doctrinal belief, there will be a resurrection of those that passed away in the former world. These resurrected ones will be provided with education and an opportunity to become Jehovah’s Witnesses as well. If they decline then they will die. Any Jehovah’s Witness member that died in the former world will be resurrected to live eternity with friends and family, they will have perfect health with none of the maladies they may have experienced in the old world as well as have the prospect of living forever. The paradise earth is viewed as a solution to all the problems that Jehovah’s Witnesses experience living in the current world they view as being ruled by Satan. The only escape from Satan’s world is to have one of two options;

1. Wait for Armageddon to start the paradise earth.

2. Die and wake up in the paradise earth.

When JW father comes under severe emotional distress due to financial or other circumstances it is an easy escape to consider giving their family a way to enter the paradise earth immediately. The only way to do that is through murder. This has happened on several occasions in the last few years. One of the earlier cases involved the Kostelniuk family in Burnaby , British Columbia . The mother remarried a JW man who subsequently molested the children after which he murdered the family when placed under pressure. A book was written by the children’s biological father called “Wolves among Sheep” You can read about it at this link,

http://p074.ezboard.com/flambsmarchfrm33.showMessage?topicID=7.topic

Yet this was not the only case, another came up in 1995 in Atlanta, Georgia, the Barton case involved once again a JW father slaughtering his children and wife, the reason was financial and he also killed several other people as well, but why his wife and children? Could it be the reason giving them exit to a paradise earth? You can read about this case here,

http://p074.ezboard.com/flambsmarchfrm33.showMessage?topicID=12.topic

Another case was Christian Longo in Washington . Again a JW father strangles his three small children and his wife puts them in suitcases and throws them in the ocean. Financial difficulty was citied as part of the reason. You can read of this case here,

http://p074.ezboard.com/flambsmarchfrm33.showMessage?topicID=2.topic

A year later in the next state, JW father Bryant takes a shotgun and murders his four children and wife then turns the gun on himself. The reasons were financial and related to reporting of abuse. You can read this story here,

http://p074.ezboard.com/flambsmarchfrm33.showMessage?topicID=1.topic

In a reverse concept children have murdered their parents. The Freeman brothers killed their brother and parents after becoming skinheads. Part of the reason given was due to being raised as JW’s. This resulted in a book and movie, you can read about his here,

http://p074.ezboard.com/flambsmarchfrm33.showMessage?topicID=4.topic

Then there are cases of JW parents killing just their children. In each case you have to wonder if they believed they were helping the child find paradise. You can read these stories here,

Laree Slack age 12 Chicago IL-01.

JW parents murder their daughter by hitting her 160 times with a 5-foot stretch of electrical cable

Girl died after parents hit her 160 times, court told

By Kirsten Scharnberg and Eric Ferkenhoff, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune staff reporter Rudolph Bush contributed to this report

Published November 14, 2001

Even veteran prosecutors were stunned by the case outlined in court Tuesday: A South Side couple were accused of flogging their 12-year-old daughter to death with a 5-foot stretch of electrical cable after she was tied down.

Larry and Constance Slack, described by neighbors as devoutly religious, delivered 160 blows to their daughter Laree, according to the charges, stuffing a towel in her mouth at one point to silence her screams.

"This is the absolute worst I've seen," Assistant State's Atty. Robert Hovey whispered as the Slacks, both 41, were led into the courtroom. The pair were ordered held without bond on first-degree murder charges in the fatal weekend beating of their daughter as well as charges of aggravated battery of a child for the beating of their 8-year-old son.

In a slow, steady voice, Assistant State's Atty. Beth Pfeiffer stood before the judge and began to read the accusations against the Slacks, described by authorities and neighbors as Jehovah's Witnesses who were so strict with their six children that they were not even allowed to play with other kids from the neighborhood.

According to Pfeiffer, the couple had been planning to go out for dinner Saturday night but had been unable to locate a jacket that had Constance Slack's wallet and credit cards in the pocket. So Larry Slack ordered the children, who range in age from 8 to 17, to search for it.

When the children did not seem to be looking hard enough for the jacket, Pfeiffer said, Larry Slack grabbed an electric cable that was about three-quarters of an inch thick and lashed the couple's 8-year-old son, Lester, four to five times in the legs and buttocks.

Larry Slack, a Chicago Transit Authority machinist for the past 22 years, soon grew even angrier because dirty laundry was scattered about the house, impeding the search, the prosecutor said. Laree had been in charge of washing and putting away laundry in the home, Pfeiffer said.

"Larry Slack then ordered Laree to `assume the position,'" the prosecutor said, which meant that the 12-year-old was to stand ready to be whipped.

Larry Slack lashed Laree four or five times with the same cord he had used on her brother, according to the prosecutor, but he grew angrier still when the girl attempted to squirm away. The father ordered his two teenage sons to tie Laree face down to a metal futon frame and then administered 39 lashes to the girl's back, Pfeiffer said. Constance Slack then took the cord and whipped the girl 20 more times, the prosecutor alleged.

The first-floor Cook County courtroom, usually abuzz with lawyers talking about their upcoming cases or milling about distributing paperwork, grew silent as the prosecutor spoke. The details she told the judge next seemed to shock everyone even more.

Girl began to scream

According to Pfeiffer, when Laree began to scream, Larry Slack ordered his sons to fetch a towel to stuff in her mouth. He then tied a scarf over the towel and used a stick to wind the scarf like a tourniquet into place.

He then cut off his daughter's shirt, ordered the other children to pull off her pants and whipped her 39 more times, the prosecutor said. Constance followed with 20 more lashes, Pfeiffer said.

As Laree writhed from what would total more than 160 blows, the girl's back began to bleed. So, according to Pfeiffer, Larry Slack untied her, turned her over and beat her 39 more times on her stomach and chest.

"It was an awful one," Pfeiffer said after court, shaking her head. "And to think they involved the other children, that's what gets me."

The case of Laree Slack, who was pronounced dead at South Shore Hospital just hours after her beating, has rattled even seasoned child abuse experts.

"Do you know how hard it is to kill a 12-year-old?" said Demetra Soter, a physician who is coordinator of pediatric trauma at Cook County Hospital.

According to Soter, children as old as Laree Slack require "massive amounts of force to die like this." Soter said she had only heard of two comparable cases in recent years, one a DuPage County teenager whose father is accused of fatally beating him for stealing a car.

John Goad, the associate deputy director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, concurred. He said the vast majority of homicides involving children are in cases where the child is under the age of 3. Those children, Goad said, often are on the receiving end of their caregiver's rage because they have soiled their pants or cried uncontrollably.

In addition, Goad said, Laree's death comes at a time when child abuse cases are hitting new lows in Cook County. He cited a 22.7 percent decrease in reported abuse cases in Cook County the last five years.

Goad said part of the reason for the drop is that social service agencies are getting better at counseling families who are reported as having abused or neglected their children.

DCFS officials said Tuesday that the Slack family, who live in the 7900 block of South Brandon Avenue, has had at least one contact with the department in the past.

In 1995, DCFS received a report that the youngest of the family's children had been found walking on the street alone, according to DCFS director Jess McDonald. Investigators later learned that a plumber had been doing work at the family's house and left a fence open, allowing the child to walk out.

Although the circumstances of that case do not indicate that DCFS failed to protect the Slack children, McDonald said the department is grief-stricken over Laree's death.

"Any time a child dies, and you've had any involvement in the case at any time, people literally get sick," McDonald said. "It really does eat at you. I think when there's a chance that the system was involved, obviously we want to find out, did we miss anything at any point in time?"

Death penalty may be asked

In court Tuesday, Pfeiffer, the assistant state's attorney, argued to Judge Neil Linehan that the two were not eligible for bond because the state may seek the death penalty and because Laree Slack's death was especially "heinous" and "the result of torture." According to a spokesman in the Cook County medical examiner's office, the girl died of multiple blunt force traumas.

The Slacks, neither of whom have any previous criminal history, both have made videotaped admissions about the beating, the prosecutor said. According to Pfeiffer and police who were there when the Slacks were being questioned, Larry Slack attempted to kill himself while in custody.

Pfeiffer said Larry Slack, who weighs more than 350 pounds, had sneaked a 6-inch kitchen knife into the Calumet Area police station by hiding it in the folds of his skin. He stabbed himself in the chest and was transported to Christ Hospital and Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he was treated for minor injuries before being returned to police custody.

Calumet Area detectives who were familiar with the case said Tuesday that Larry Slack had told them that he strongly believed in corporal punishment. They also said that they knew him to be deeply religious, but they added it was unclear whether Slack was abiding by some religious mandate.

But Leon Slack, an uncle of Laree's, said religion had nothing to do with what happened. "Our family loved Laree dearly," read a statement the family released Tuesday.

In a brief telephone interview, the uncle went further.

"What happened was a tragedy," he said. "It was not in line with religion. Something obviously went wrong, and we just want to grieve as a family."

Neighbors of the Slacks' said the family was quiet and kept to themselves. There was a tall fence around their yard, but the children were sometimes seen building a tree house on the side lawn.

"The only time I saw them all together was one Saturday when they were going to church. They looked really nice, cheerful and happy," said Noel Chapa, a next door neighbor.

Source: Chicago Tribune

Ri’vene Phifer infant NC- 97

http://p074.ezboard.com/flambsmarchfrm33.showMessage?topicID=14.topic

Knight infant CA-99

http://p074.ezboard.com/flambsmarchfrm33.showMessage?topicID=5.topic

Infant France-02

http://p074.ezboard.com/flambsmarchfrm33.showMessage?topicID=6.topic

Brian Mackey and son 12 Florida-03

http://p074.ezboard.com/flambsmarchfrm33.showMessage?topicID=11.topic

Robert and Ben Moore 10-13 WS-93 unsolved murder

http://p074.ezboard.com/flambsmarchfrm33.showMessage?topicID=8.topic

When you consider that Jehovah’s Witnesses are a relatively small religion, under one million members in the USA it is disturbing to see that most cases that involved the murder of a family by the father in recent years have had JW connections. Is this just a coincidence? Could it be that the theology and doctrine of Jehovah’s Witnesses creates a type of time bomb that can be tripped of the right set of circumstances presents it? The information above seems to indicate that this could be a strong possibility. -- Bill Bowen of Silentlambs

Actual News Articles (top are most recent):

________________________________________

www.suntimes.com

Family of three murdered in Harvey

December 1, 2004

BY MAUDLYNE IHEJIRIKA Staff Reporter

Vinese Bell-Kracht had decided it was time for her and her 1-year-old son, Emery, to move on with their lives.

The 21-year-old bank clerk had had enough of the domestic abuse she said she suffered at the hands of her troubled husband of almost two years, Martin Kracht, relatives said. After the last incident more than a month ago, she'd filed charges, had him arrested and sought a restraining order against him, according to court records.

And she had started that new life, with a new job and a new apartment.

But Bell-Kracht's life came to a sudden and violent end Monday, police said. She, her son and her mother-in-law, Barbara Baker-Kracht, 52, were found murdered in Baker-Kracht's Harvey home. The three died at the hands of 24-year-old Martin Kracht, who less than two weeks ago moved in with the mother he allegedly killed, police and relatives said.

Chilling discovery

On Tuesday, members of Bell-Kracht's close-knit family gathered at their south suburban Richton Park home, struggling to understand the tragedy that had befallen the young mother, child and grandmother.

Police made the chilling discovery of the bodies at Baker-Kracht's home in the 15000 block of South Marshfield Avenue in Harvey about 9 p.m. Monday.

"It was a well-being check that was requested by a family member," said Harvey Police spokeswoman Sandra Alvarado.

Shortly after the bodies were found, Harvey Police arrested Kracht on a tip from relatives, who knew he was hiding in a garage only blocks away.

Kracht was expected to be charged with three counts of first-degree murder late Tuesday, according to Harvey Police and the Cook County State's Attorney's Office.

"This appears to be domestic-related homicide," Alvarado said. "It was not a random act of violence. This is a senseless tragedy."

Police would not say how the three died, but they noted none of the victims was shot.

'Seemed like nice people'

Neighbors in the quiet neighborhood where Baker-Kracht recently bought her home milled outside their houses, helping each other grapple with the horror.

"When they first moved in, I came out to welcome them to the neighborhood. He and his mother seemed like nice people," Denise Lollis, who has lived across the street for 23 years, said Tuesday. "I have never, ever seen anything like this. This has been rough. It just keeps you praying."

Police said they may never know what triggered the killings.

Bell-Kracht's family said she had met her husband in 2002 through her brother, who had invited Martin Kracht to join the Jehovah's Witnesses faith her family practiced. Martin Kracht had attended Thornton Township North High School with Bell-Kracht's brother, Shaun Winston, graduating in 1998, Winston recalled.

Kracht began visiting the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses at 150 E. 124th Pl., in Chicago with Winston and his family of six siblings.

"He acknowledged he was living a life of debauchery, and said he wanted clean up life. He was baptized a Jehovah's Witness, "Winston said. "He met my sister, and they liked each other. I advised her against it," he added, choking back tears.

Winston's advice went unheeded. The pair dated for five months before marrying. But Kracht, then living with a friend in Harvey, was unable to support his new wife, floating from job to job, Winston said. So Dennis and Sherry Harris, Bell-Kracht's parents, allowed Kracht to move in with his wife and her family in Richton Park.

That's when the trouble started.

"He started pushing on her and she was pregnant. One time he pushed her down," Winston said. "That was when my father talked to him, and kicked him out."

Sought restraining order

The abuse reportedly got worse, culminating in an October incident that resulted in Bell-Kracht seeking a restraining order against her husband, barring him from her home in Richton Park. But on Nov. 8 she appeared in court in Markham and asked that both the protection order and the abuse charges be dismissed.

"The victim didn't wish to proceed," said Marcy Jensen, a spokeswoman for the Cook County state's attorney's office. "We don't know why."

Last summer, relatives said, Bell-Kracht had become convinced it was time to give up on her marriage and move on. She landed a job at Charter One Bank in Homewood and only last week secured a small apartment in south suburban Steger for herself and her son.

On Saturday, her family helped her move in, and on Sunday Kracht came to Kingdom Hall asking to see his son, her relatives said. Bell-Kracht acquiesced, letting him take the boy for a day and arranging to pick up Emeryon Monday evening.

"But on Monday, we didn't hear from her after work, which was unusual for Vinese. We knew something had happened when the police called."

Contributing: Stefano Esposito, Annie Sweeney, Lisa Donovan and Cheryl V. Jackson

________________________________________

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0412010285dec01,1,3695005.story?coll=chi-news-hed

Suspect's mom, wife, son slain

Woman had filed abuse charges against husband, then dropped them

By Rick Jervis and Patrick Rucker, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune staff reporters Jo Napolitano and Bonnie Miller Rubin contributed to this report

Published December 1, 2004

The mother of an 11-month-old boy, Vinese Bell-Kracht was trying to piece her life together after a rocky two-year marriage. Last month her estranged husband, Martin Kracht, was charged with beating her, and the court ordered him to stay away from his wife and child.

But Bell-Kracht, torn between the pain of a troubled marriage and the challenges of caring for an infant son by herself, decided she had to have her husband's help. She asked that the charges be dropped, and on Nov. 8, they were, along with the court order of protection, prosecutors said.

About 9 p.m. Monday, Harvey police found the bodies of Bell-Kracht, 21; her son, Emery; and Barbara Baker-Kracht, 52, Martin Kracht's mother, in Baker-Kracht's Harvey home.

Kracht, 24, was arrested Tuesday morning in the garage of another relative's home in Harvey. He remained in police custody Tuesday night pending charges, police said.

Bell-Kracht's slaying ended what officials say was an abusive relationship that left a trail of court documents and police reports. For family members who had tried to steer her clear of the violence, it opened another painful chapter even as police and prosecutors pondered whether to charge Kracht.

"We're just numb," said Bell-Kracht's brother Shaun Winston, 24, standing outside his family's Richton Park home as family and friends filed in.

"That was my baby," Winston said, describing his sister as "the closest sibling I had."

Harvey police officials were tight-lipped about the details of the slayings, which occurred in the 15100 block of Marshfield Avenue. They could not confirm how the victims died or whether a weapon had been found.

At a news conference outside the brick bungalow where the slayings occurred, Cmdr. Merritt Gentry told reporters that he did not expect charges to be filed Tuesday by the Cook County state's attorney's office. Autopsies were scheduled for Wednesday.

"It's going to be a while," Gentry said. "We don't foresee any charges at this time, or any time soon, because there is a great deal of investigative work still to be done."

Family members described a relationship that was happy at first but quickly deteriorated.

Winston said he introduced the two. He knew Kracht when both were students at Thornton Township High School in Harvey and ran into him again, in the summer of 2002, at the University of Illinois' Chicago campus, where Winston was studying journalism. Kracht appeared sullen and depressed, Winston said.

"He said he wanted to get his life together," Winston said. "I told him to come hang with me. I regret ever doing that."

A devout Jehovah's Witness, Winston took Kracht to the movies, brought him to the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses Church in Chicago and introduced him to his sister.

Bell-Kracht, the middle of six siblings, was quiet and shy but loved dancing and showing off in front of her family, Winston said. She became drawn to Winston's new friend. They hit it off and were married four months later, in January 2003, he said. Kracht moved into the family's home on Capri Lane in Richton Park that summer.

But trouble soon started.

On Oct. 6, 2003, Richton Park police responded to a domestic-disturbance call at the home.

"They had gotten into a verbal argument, and she called police," said Richton Park Police Chief Leonard Czaplewski. "She did not want to press charges."

After that incident, the family expelled Kracht from the home, and he lived with friends and family members in Harvey while keeping in touch with Bell-Kracht, Winston said.

A year later, on Oct. 17, court records show, police responded to 2353 W. 57th St. in Markham and arrested Kracht on charges that he, "struck [his wife] about the torso with closed fists and threw her down to the ground."

Kracht was arrested that afternoon and charged with misdemeanor domestic battery.

At a hearing the next day, he was released on his own recognizance, but was ordered not to harass, abuse or stalk Bell-Kracht. He also was ordered to stay away from the Capri Lane home and the Charter One Bank in Homewood, where Bell-Kracht had been working as a teller since July. Visits with Emery were to be arranged through his mother, court documents show.

Bell-Kracht dropped the charges at the first court hearing on Nov. 8. She did so, Winston said, because she needed Kracht's help in caring for Emery and it was too difficult with the court's protective order.

"We listen very closely to our victims, and we take very seriously what their wishes are," said Tom Stanton, a spokesman for the state's attorney's office. "In this instance she did not wish to continue with the charges."

But in the interest of protecting the victim, even if she asks for the charges to be dropped, the state's attorney's office generally will not comply at the bail hearing, according to Dan Tsatoros, a former assistant state's attorney who is the court advocate coordinator and civil attorney for the South Suburban Family Shelter.

To protect the victim, the court will have jurisdiction over the person accused of abuse, who, at a bail hearing, is ordered not to have contact with the victim for 72 hours, and sometimes longer. After that period, even if the victim decides to drop the charges, the state can, without her cooperation, pursue a "victimless prosecution," Tsatoros said.

"But if the state cannot meet its burden of proof without the testimony of the victim, then the prosecutors' hands may be tied and are forced to dismiss the charges," he said. Such changes of heart occur about 75 percent of the time, he said.

Winston said his younger sister was on her way to getting back on her feet and trying to rid herself of her past with Kracht. On Saturday, she had moved into her own apartment in Steger, where she planned to raise Emery, and was saving to file for divorce, he said.

Last Wednesday, Winston said, he pulled Kracht aside after services at Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses Church and gave a stern, quiet warning: "Do not put your hands on my sister again."

"He was so bothered by what was going on in his life, he didn't even seem to listen," Winston said.

Kracht showed up at the church on Sunday to pick up Emery, Winston said. Bell-Kracht was scheduled to pick up the child from Kracht's mother's house Monday.

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2-22-04

By NANCY H. McLAUGHLIN, Staff Writer

News & Record

RALEIGH -- The baby would be 7 now, in elementary school and learning to read.

In an ideal world, her death never would have happened. In an ideal world, the teenage mom wouldn't be longing for forgiveness.

An ideal world is the one Racquel Phifer wants to be a part of -- not the concrete-and-glass world of the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women, where she is serving 10 to 13 years for the second-degree murder of her only child.

"I wished my mother could have looked at me and known something was wrong," the petite 27-year-old says of the concealed pregnancy in Greensboro in 1997 that led to her life spiraling out of control.

The high school dropout who had been raped as a child had already showed signs of undiagnosed mental illnesses before she gave birth that January to the infant the Greensboro community would come to know as Baby Jane Doe.

With her parents at work and her brother in school, Phifer laid out blankets on a cold day and delivered the baby on the floor of a room in her parent's upper-middle-class home.

After bathing her, playing with her dark hair and counting tiny fingers and toes, Phifer wrapped the hours-old newborn in a clean white blanket and placed her in a Dumpster in nearby Oka T. Hester Park. A man looking for cans the next day found her among the garbage.

Phifer's was the latest in a string of concealed pregnancies on the East Coast that ended in dead newborns that year. But the discovery of the dead baby in a Greensboro trash bin touched the heart of the community. It responded by taking care of Phifer's baby as if she were its own, dressing her tiny body in a donated white gown and diaper, transporting her to a graveyard in a hearse followed by a caravan of cars and carefully etching a grave marker that read: "May we reach out in love to every child in need."

"The fact that she was buried and put away nicely -- that all helps," says Phifer's mother, Baleria Phifer, a teacher who wouldn't know that the infant dominating local news coverage was her grandbaby until her daughter's arrest. "She was taken care of, she was surrounded by love'' from the community.

More than 500 people showed up for the funeral.

"What I remember most are the pictures of that little infant in the bottom of that Dumpster," says Howard Neumann, the Guilford County assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case that summer. "I can still close my eyes and see her there."

Phifer, who won't be eligible for parole for at least three years, wants people to know she's sorry. She also wants to say "thank you" to the people who saw that the child she named Ri'vene Lea Anderson had a proper burial.

?Phifer, dressed in a dark-blue prison jumpsuit and girlishly pretty with her sliver of silver eye shadow, has spent years in therapy dealing with illnesses diagnosed after she was arrested, including dissociative amnesia, which causes fragmented memory, and schizoaffective disorder, which is marked by major depression and psychotic symptoms.

She says she can't remember all of what happened the day she put her daughter in the Dumpster, but she knows it never should have happened. She wants girls who may face her predicament to know her story and how a split-second decision could ruin their lives and the lives of others.

"If you don't want to tell your parents, tell somebody," says a suddenly subdued Phifer, also known as Inmate 58449, who still looks 19 except for the natural burst of gray in her hair. "I would love to have (the public's) forgiveness. I would love to have their understanding. But I'm doing this so that anybody else going through this will tell somebody.

"I know that type of fear is unbearable," Phifer says.

Phifer remains troubled by the past. She wishes she could go back to the day she thought she was pregnant. She says she knows it will be hard for people to understand how she could hold her baby and then place her in the trash bin in frigid weather.

"I actually thought of it as a baby sitter," Phifer says. "I got in and out of it four times. There was no trash in it. I put her there and told her I would come back."

Growing up in a strict home, Phifer had an exaggerated fear of disappointing her parents. Life already had been difficult. She had flunked at least three grades and dropped out of high school. In their investigation, police would find years-old suicide letters Phifer had written after she was raped at 11 by an older male relative.

In her devout Jehovah's Witness family, Phifer grew up hearing that sex before marriage was immoral. Her parents didn't know about the rape. They would have been mortified had they known about the pregnancy. She saw her situation as hopeless and believed she had no options.

"That would have been disgraceful to my mother," Phifer says. " 'What people think' is how I was raised."

Baleria Phifer didn't know about the deep-seeded antagonism her daughter held against her until she heard Racquel's confession read in court. Phifer says she was closer to her father, Larry, a long-distance truck driver.

She was able to hide her pregnancy because she had gained and lost 100 pounds the year before, something doctors later attributed to bulimia nervosa, an eating disorder.

As the baby grew inside her, Phifer began reading baby books and decided that she would ask an aunt if she could move into the aunt's home. But her aunt began helping someone else, so Phifer kept silent. The baby's father, a young man she had met at a part-time job, had moved back to Illinois. He wanted her to join him, but she had said no.

She says she called crisis-pregnancy agencies but somehow got it in her head that they just wanted to take her baby.

"I said, 'Could you help me tell my parents?' and they said, 'We can send you somewhere.' ''

Her water broke about midnight on Jan. 29. She delivered the baby at 2:27 p.m. the next day.

She had read "The Complete Book of Pregnancy and Childbirth'' and, remembering what she had learned in some medical classes, had already gathered blankets and scissors.

She says she was in labor when she drove her mother to work that morning.

"It was like I was doctor, nurse, coach," Phifer says. "I had read a lot, but then I was worried: What if she was breeched or needed special care?"

After delivering the baby, Phifer got into the bathtub with the baby and played with her until the phone rang.

"I'd decided I was just going to hand her to my mother," Phifer remembers thinking.

But her mother, who wanted her daughter to pick her up at work, was already angry when Phifer picked up the telephone.

"She was saying, 'Why aren't you here?' " Phifer says. "I wished I could have been woman enough to say, 'I'm late because I've just delivered my baby.' "

Instead, she panicked.

She drove around her neighborhood and then to nearby Hester Park, where she came upon the Dumpster.

Then she drove to her mother's job and picked her up, falling asleep in the car as her mother carried out her errands. Back at home she slept for the next 16 hours.

She didn't go back to the Dumpster. She says she doesn't know why. In her mind, it was almost as if none of it had happened.

But it had.

Darlene Maynard, a grief counselor who had already helped survivors and relatives of the Columbine school shootings and Oklahoma City bombing with their recovery, was one of the first to step forward when word got out that a dead baby had been found in a park.

"There had been several babies up north left to die. It was like, 'My goodness, this has come home,' " says Maynard, then-director of a Greensboro grief and loss-education center.

She began organizing a community funeral. People began calling, wanting to help. The city donated a burial plot at Maplewood Cemetery. The funeral drew a crowd that reflected the city's races, ages and economics.

Saying it touched the community emotionally is not an overstatement, says Maynard, who was part of the 150-car funeral procession.

"We get to the corner of Florida and Aycock streets, and these two old 'bummy-type' men, they stopped when her hearse went by and put their hands across their heart and saluted," Maynard says.

"She had become a symbol for our community," Maynard says. "I thought it was one of the most healing things our community has come together to do. Here was this child that belonged to no one, and all of a sudden we were getting all kinds of toys and dolls and books and balloons to be placed on her grave."

Phifer says she knew none of that. For the next few weeks, she didn't watch the news. Only after a detective showed up at her door, saying someone had called police to report she had been pregnant, were her thoughts drawn back to the Dumpster. A co-worker who had guessed early on that she was pregnant called Crime Stoppers.

Investigators talked to Phifer and other potential suspects. After taking a lie-detector test, Phifer was arrested. The first-degree murder charge eventually would be reduced to one of second-degree murder.

"It lacked that component of evil that so many crimes we deal with up here involve," Neumann says. "This was not a crime where she hated that child. This was an immature child herself who was confronted with a situation ... and she couldn't figure out how to deal with it."

During those few months in jail, she had heard of the other East Coast cases similar to hers, including the case of college students Brian Peterson and Amy Grossberg, who put their baby in a Dumpster and were eventually sentenced to less than two years in jail.

"I think half of me thought it would be OK and I would go home," Phifer says. "When Amy had the baby in the hotel, there were complications, but Brian beat the baby in the head with a baseball bat. I didn't harm Ri'vene in any way. No scars. No bruises. No nothing. I was the only one to hold her. I loved her."

Phifer's judge could have given her as little as seven years, 10 months in prison or as much as 16 years, 5 months. He sentenced her to 10 to 13 years.

Almost immediately strangers began writing her.

"I was waiting for the hate mail, but they were very encouraging,'' Phifer says of the letters, one of which advised her to "Keep your head up, sister.'' "Older people... were telling me it's going to be OK, people make mistakes."

At first, other inmates, many of them mothers, responded to her in anger.

"I've been called everything but a child of God. I went through, 'It's Daddy's baby, Mama did it,' and I took the rap."

A couple of inmates from Greensboro took her under their wings, and today she considers many of the people there like family.

Since then Phifer has earned her high school diploma and taken every self-improvement class available except culinary arts. "I simply can't cook," she says with a shy smile.

She has also drawn closer to her mother.

"She tries. I think she does," Phifer says of her mother. "My mother does blame herself for this. But I also had to think about it. I wasn't a child who came with instructions. She did the best she could."

Her parents visit frequently.

"We were really close. She was just sick," says Baleria Phifer, who says she has seen her daughter mature with therapy.

"I deal with it better now, but I think it's something that will always be with me," Baleria Phifer says of the loss that she, too, feels.

Baleria Phifer has given her daughter one of the pictures she was able to get of Ri'vene in her white casket. The rest, including the newspaper clippings and a few of the stuffed animals people left at her grave, have been packed up and placed in Phifer's bedroom closet, waiting for her return.

"I really don't see her as gone," Phifer says. "I know she is. I just don't have that closure."

Contact Nancy H. McLaughlin at 373-7049 or nmclaughlin@news-record.com

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www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-locfamilyshot26082603aug26,0,3371221.story?coll=orl-home-headlines

Fort Lauderdale man fatally shoots son, self

The Associated Press

Posted August 26, 2003

FORT LAUDERDALE -- A man fatally shot himself and his 12-year-old son early Monday after arguing with the boy's mother, police said.

Carl Dennis Mackey, 41, and his son, Brian, were found fatally shot when a SWAT team entered the house about 5 a.m.

The boy's mother, Laura Mackey, ran out of the house shortly after midnight and told officers that her husband was trying to kill her, Detective Jack DiCristofalo said.

The officers had been responding to a separate incident across the street.

"She said she'd heard two shots fired. She said they'd been having domestic problems," DiCristofalo said.

Officials made phone calls to the house and to the family's cell phones for the next few hours.

Hostage negotiators were never able to make contact, and officers heard no further shots fired, DiCristofalo said.

About 5 a.m., a SWAT team entered the house and found the bodies.

A small-caliber, semiautomatic handgun was on the floor near Carl Mackey's body, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported.

"We're totally shocked. Carl was always a gentleman, a religious and family man type of guy," said Mike Scott, Mackey's supervisor at Plantation's public works department.

"He was always upbeat and smiling."

DiCristofalo said Laura Mackey was with family Monday.

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April 3, 2003

Longo's in-law defends MaryJane

By Bill Bishop

The Register-Guard

NEWPORT - There was never any doubt in Sally Clark's mind that her sister, MaryJane Longo, would choose to be a mother, and would be a good one.

Clark testified Wednesday as one of the final witnesses in the aggravated murder trial of Christian Michael Longo, the man who swore on the witness stand Tuesday that MaryJane murdered two of their children before he murdered her and their youngest child in December 2001.

Longo, 29, faces a possible death sentence for killing MaryJane, 34, and their daughter, Madison, 2. A jury will soon decide whether he also is guilty of killing his son, Zachery, 4, and daughter, Sadie, 3.

Dry-eyed, calm and focused, Clark never looked at Longo in 20 minutes of testimony during which she recalled how MaryJane played house as a child, baby-sat as an adolescent and worked for 10 years in a pediatric doctor's office as a young adult - eventually becoming the office manager.

"She was always very good with children," Clark said.

Describing MaryJane as "my best friend," Clark said she and MaryJane remained close after they both married and became mothers. On a weekly basis they would meet to take their children to a museum, a zoo or to some other child-oriented activity while they both lived in Michigan, Clark testified.

"She was very attentive to kids," Clark testified.

Asked by Paulette Sanders, chief Lincoln County deputy district attorney, whether she had ever seen MaryJane do anything that caused her to have concern for a child's safety, Clark responded, "Absolutely not."

Clark described MaryJane as "a quiet, shy, mild person," who was so devoted to the Jehovah's Witnesses church that she joined Clark to voluntarily do 1,000 hours of door-to-door ministry in a single year.

Clark testified that MaryJane seemed not to know much about the large debts that Longo was running up on credit cards.

She said MaryJane told her she understood why Longo wrote bad checks against a construction company that owed him money, and why Longo did not want church elders to know about the fraud.

Asked by Sanders whether she'd ever known MaryJane to lie to her or to others, Clark relied, "Never."

After Longo and MaryJane moved to Oregon, without notice and with no forwarding address, Clark said she notified state police, Secret Service and FBI officials in two states. She said she knew Longo was hiding from the law and arrest warrants had been issued against him.

Asked what she would have done had MaryJane called her from Oregon to say she was in trouble, Clark said, "I would have been out here in a heartbeat."

Clark's testimony closed the 12th day of Longo's trial, cut short because the prosecution's final witness - a state medical examiner - was unavailable.

The jury may begin deliberating after the final witness and closing statements today.

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Jurors Convict Mom Of Murder For Toilet-Drowning Infant

Juror Claims Panel Unaware They Had Other Options

AP, Oct. 24, 2002

www.nbc4.tv/

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Jurors who convicted a woman of second-degree murder in the toilet-drowning death of her newborn son may not have realized that they could have convicted her of involuntary manslaughter.

Donna Michelle Knight's sentencing was postponed for at least two months by Superior Court Judge Ronald Taylor so defense attorney Grover Porter can question jurors to determine if they misunderstood instructions. One juror claimed the panel didn't know involuntary manslaughter was an option.

Knight, 37, was convicted June 14 of murdering her son in September 1999. The 10-woman, two-man jury returned a second-degree murder verdict, which calls for 15 years to life in prison. Involuntary manslaughter carries a maximum sentence of four years.

Deputy District Attorney Deena Bennett had sought a first-degree murder conviction, arguing that the unmarried woman intentionally killed her baby after concealing her pregnancy because she was afraid of repercussions from her Jehovah's Witness church.

Bennett said the religion considers sexual relations outside of marriage grounds for excommunication.

Porter argued that Knight, who weighed at least 275 pounds, did not know she was pregnant and on the day of the baby's death she was taking antidepressants and other medication and could not remember what happened.

Although jurors were given an instruction for involuntary manslaughter, the foreman told them they could not consider that option, a juror said. Actually, it was voluntary manslaughter that was not to be considered.

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• Family of Six Found Dead in McMinnville

• Bryants described as 'perfect family'

• Bryant murder/suicide oddly similar to Christian Longo case

Family of six found dead; police believe father killed family, then self

March 15, 2002

MCMINNVILLE - The community of McMinnville was visibly shaken after investigators discovered a family of six shot to death in their home in an apparent murder-suicide Friday.

Robert Bryant is believed to have shot his wife and four children - whose ages range from 9 to 15 - before turning the gun on himself, said Yamhill County District Attorney Bradley C. Berry.

Robert Bryant was found dead in the living room, 37-year-old Janet Ellen Bryant in the master bedroom, and their four children in their beds, Berry said.

All had been killed by shotgun blasts.

"Evidence ... indicates that Mr. Robert Bryant killed his wife and children and then took his own life," Berry said, although a motive is not yet known.

"It was a horrible sight," Berry said.

The children last attended school on Feb. 22, and the shootings are believed to have occurred the following day, he said.

Dead are the 37-year-old father, his 37-year-old wife, Janet Ellen Bryant, as well as 15-year-old Clayton, 12-year-old Ethan, 10-year-old Ashley and 9-year-old Alissa Bryant.

Bryant was a self-employed landscaping contractor.

Family Leaves California After Being Shunned; Bryant Parents Worried About Custody Battle

A former California neighbor, Albert Clary, said the Bryants and their relatives were Jehovah's Witnesses.

According to Clary, Robert Bryant got into an argument with a church leader over the Bible while he and his family were still living in California.

The family was reportedly shunned by both other Jehovah's witnesses as well as their own relatives following the incident.

In fact, the Bryants were essentially kicked out of the church three years ago, KATU News learned from an elder church member of the California congregation to which the Bryants belonged.

“Mr. Bryant was expelled from the congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses for conduct that was not in harmony with Bible principles, and chose to move his family from the area away from friends and family,” said congregation elder Mark Messier Sr.

Also, Mr. and Mrs. Bryant were concerned that relatives may seek custody of their four children, Messier said.

According to the church elder, relatives of the Bryant family had already filed documents in an effort to seek custody.

The Bryants came to Oregon last summer to make a fresh start, a former neighbor of the family told KATU News.

Two Jehovah's Witnesses who were at the McMinnville church on Friday said they had never heard of the Bryants.

A study of California bankruptcy records indicates that the family moved to McMinnville from Shingle Springs California, where the father had a landscaping business called Bryant's Landscape Maintenance.

A Gruesome Discovery

Two Yamhill County sheriff's deputies were in the vicinity of the Bryants' McMinnville home Thursday night when neighbors approached them to express concern about the family.

Deputies spotted what appeared to be a body inside the home. They obtained a search warrant and found all six bodies inside.

On Friday, deputies roped off the area around the Bryants' manufactured home on a hillside outside McMinnville, a prosperous town in the heart of Oregon's wine-growing country.

Detectives searched the grounds for clues but found nothing.

The home sits on about two acres of a rural subdivision west of McMinnville, in hills at the foot of Oregon's Coast Range and about 20 miles south of Portland.

"There Were No Warning Signs"

Neighbors told investigators the Bryants were planning to build a larger house on the site.

"It was our understanding that they planned to build a bigger home and then sell it...so he had a lot of ideas of what he was going to do in the future, so this really surprised us," family acquaintance Colin Armstrong told KATU News.

In a phone interview, Jeanna Wright told katu.com that her daughter Jaden was friends with Ashley Bryant at Memorial Elementary School. Mrs. Wright said her daughter had not seen Ashley in Mrs. Mecker's class for two weeks and was concerned.

Karen Richey, assistant superintendent for the McMinnville School District, said teachers had noticed the children's absence from school and several attempts were made to contact the Bryants.

"We had people knocking on the door several times," but no one ever answered the door, she said.

At first school officials weren't alarmed, because it is not uncommon for students to be absent during the flu season, she said.

School officials say that a 10-day absence is not unheard of, and there were no real warning signs to alert them that anything may have been wrong at home.

Ashley's younger sister Alissa was a second grade student at Memorial Elementary.

Ethan was a sixth grader at Patton Middle School, and Clayton, the oldest, attended McMinnville High School.

The Children Were Well-Liked

Not surprisingly, this apparent murder-suicide has saddened many who knew the Bryant children.

"Ethan Bryant was a very nice young man, he had many friends. We are very saddened by this tragedy," Assistant Principal of Patton Middle School, Mark Hyder told katu.com.

"Ethan was new to our district this year...he was a very popular sixth-grader," said Hyder. "We're just trying to get through this day supporting students and their families."

In a press conference this morning, McMinnville Superintendent Elaine Taylor told the media, "the Memorial staff is understandably very grief-stricken, the two teachers of the children...are having a difficult time..."

It was clear that Taylor was struggling to maintain composure.

Alissa and Ashley Bryant were described by Memorial Elementary staff as "bright students who showed an interest in school."

McMinnville High School, Patton Middle School, and Memorial Elementary all have extra counselors on site today to help students and staff cope with their grief.

________________________________________

Bryants described as 'perfect family'

March 16, 2002

MCMINNVILLE, ORE. (AP) - Robert Bryant moved his family to Oregon from California last year abruptly after becoming estranged from his parents and siblings over church issues and going into bankruptcy.

Things started getting better when they arrived in McMinnville.

Now, friends and acquaintances are asking themselves why Bryant would kill his wife Janet, their four children and himself, destroying what one acquaintance called "a perfect family."

Yamhill County District Attorney Bradley Berry has listed the deaths as murder-suicide and says they probably took place about Feb. 23. They were not reported until suspicious neighbors alerted sheriff's deputies late Thursday night.

Dead are Robert Arlie and Janet Ellen, both 37, and children Clayton Keith, 15, Ethan Lance, 12, Ashley Rose, 10, and Alyssa Megan, 9.

Investigators believe Robert Bryant killed the other five with one shotgun blast each, then turned the gun on himself.

Neighbors in McMinnville and a family spokesman in California say the fallout was due to undisclosed differences between Bryant and the Jehovah's Witness church he had attended for years.

Jehovah's Witnesses in Shingle Springs had banned Robert Bryant from the congregation there, an act that members call "disfellowship." The action was taken, church elder Mark Messier said, for Bryant's "unrepentant behavior" that violated church beliefs. Then his family apparently did so as well.

RV park owner Howard Angell said Robert confided the family had left a "big problem" in California, actually fleeing out of fear in the middle of the night, the McMinnville News-Register reported.

Hermina Sampson of McMinnville met Robert Bryant soon after he came to town last summer and was going door to door drumming up work for his landscaping business. "He told me he had to get away from the grandparents," she said. "The grandparents were kind of trying to brainwash the children."

A former California neighbor, Albert Clary, said Robert Bryant held Bible studies every Tuesday at his Shingle Springs home. But he homeschooled his children and limited other interaction. "They were sort of standoffish people," Clary said.

Berry said investigators may never learn why a man described as mild-mannered and deeply religious would murder a wife and children described as doting and devoted.

The family had installed a double-wide mobile home on a two-acre lot west of town in December. The Bryants enrolled the children in McMinnville public schools. They had planned to live in the mobile home only long enough to build a new house.

Four weapons were found in the house including two shotguns that Berry said were used in the crime.

Each family member died from a single blast at close range. "One shotgun shell casing was accounted for and recovered at the scene for each victim," Berry said.

The children had virtually perfect attendance records through Friday, Feb. 22. But they had not been seen in class since.

Phone calls and checks at the house got no answer.

"They were just as nice a couple as you'd ever want to meet," said Dennis Goecks, who sold the Bryants the two-acre lot last summer.

"It's one of those things that just doesn't compute."

The family lived in Shingle Springs quietly and, according to those who knew them were polite, but not outgoing. Brenda Maranville rented the Bryants a house for four years, and then sold it to them.

"They were wonderful renters, they were immaculate caretakers, their kids were always so well behaved - it's like the perfect family," she said.

Goecks said the Bryants bought the view lot west of McMinnville from him last summer and had finished paying for it by the end of the year.

Peggy Ojeda, office manager of the Dayton park where the family stayed for a short time said the family arrived June 11.

One of his first steps was creation of Bryant's Landscape & Maintenance, registered with the state at the RV park address.

"They were an extremely nice, very quiet family," Ojeda said. "They did everything together. "The children positively drooled over their dad. They never seemed afraid of him."

They aggressively advertised the business, both in the newspaper and with leaflets, and the business took off.

Robert presented a proposal to RV park owner Angell to re-landscape the entire park, but phoned back in November to say he had taken on too much other work.

Vern Skoog of Homes America had many dealings with the family in connection with the double-wide home's purchase. He remembers Robert as a "really pleasant guy." Skoog said, "He had gone through some difficulties in California, including a business bankruptcy. He was looking to make a fresh start."

The Bryants moved into the home just before Christmas.

On Jan. 13, 2000, the Bryants filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. They had unsecured debts of $57,000, mostly on credit cards. They had a home valued at $175,000, but had little equity in it.

The bankruptcy freed the Bryants from the credit card debt and some of the other debt.

By June, the Bryants had a fresh start, and set out to rebuild their businesses and finances. They continued to pay off more than $11,000 that they legally didn't have pay to Steve and Brenda Maranville.

"We struggled a little bit to get financing in place, but we were able to do it," Skoog said. He said he discounts financial pressures as a reason for the murder-suicide. The Bryant's California bankruptcy attorney agreed. "The bankruptcy took care of their financial problems," said Julia Gibbs. "They probably should have been fine."

________________________________________

Similarities between the Bryant case and the Longo murders

March 15, 2002

The Bryant case bears some similarities to the case of Christian Longo--also accused of murdering his family.

Like the Bryants, the Longo's were Jehovah's witnesses and were also disfellowshipped--or, kicked out--by their church. In Christian Longo's case it was allegedly because of repeated run-in's he had with the law.

Also like the Bryants, the Longo family moved to Oregon with the stated goal of "starting a new life."

One key difference: after allegedly murdering his 3 children and his wife, Christian Longo did not take his own life.

Instead, he spent several weeks on the run before being captured in Mexico.

________________________________________

Source: katu.com

________________________________________

JW parents murder their daughter by hitting her 160 times with a 5-foot stretch of electrical cable

Girl died after parents hit her 160 times, court told

By Kirsten Scharnberg and Eric Ferkenhoff, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune staff reporter Rudolph Bush contributed to this report

Published November 14, 2001

"Larry Slack then ordered Laree to `assume the position,'" the prosecutor said, which meant that the 12-year-old was to stand ready to be whipped.

Girl began to scream

He then cut off his daughter's shirt, ordered the other children to pull off her pants and whipped her 39 more times, the prosecutor said. Constance followed with 20 more lashes, Pfeiffer said.

"It was an awful one," Pfeiffer said after court, shaking her head. "And to think they involved the other children, that's what gets me."

The case of Laree Slack, who was pronounced dead at South Shore Hospital just hours after her beating, has rattled even seasoned child abuse experts.

"Do you know how hard it is to kill a 12-year-old?" said Demetra Soter, a physician who is coordinator of pediatric trauma at Cook County Hospital.

Goad said part of the reason for the drop is that social service agencies are getting better at counseling families who are reported as having abused or neglected their children.

DCFS officials said Tuesday that the Slack family, who live in the 7900 block of South Brandon Avenue, has had at least one contact with the department in the past.

Although the circumstances of that case do not indicate that DCFS failed to protect the Slack children, McDonald said the department is grief-stricken over Laree's death.

Death penalty may be asked

But Leon Slack, an uncle of Laree's, said religion had nothing to do with what happened. "Our family loved Laree dearly," read a statement the family released Tuesday.

In a brief telephone interview, the uncle went further.

"What happened was a tragedy," he said. "It was not in line with religion. Something obviously went wrong, and we just want to grieve as a family."

Neighbors of the Slacks' said the family was quiet and kept to themselves. There was a tall fence around their yard, but the children were sometimes seen building a tree house on the side lawn.

"The only time I saw them all together was one Saturday when they were going to church. They looked really nice, cheerful and happy," said Noel Chapa, a next door neighbor.

Source: Chicago Tribune

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Sunday, November 5, 2000

A Killer in the community

By ANOUK HOEDEMAN

Toronto Sun

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WOLVES AMONG SHEEP: The True Story Of Murder In A Jehovah's Witness Community

James Kostelniuk

(HarperCollins )

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Years ago, I had next-door neighbours who were Jehovah's Witnesses. They never tried to convert me. In fact, they hardly spoke to me at all -- or to anyone else in the apartment building. But they did once give me a book on creationism that tried to disprove the theory of evolution. All fossils, the book explained, are the same age, dating from the Great Flood. The deeper the fossils are buried, the earlier those animals drowned, but they all got there thanks to those 40 days and 40 nights of rain.

That kind of logic didn't exactly make me want to invite my neighbours over for tea, but it did leave me curious about what really goes on within the Jehovah's Witness community. In this respect, Wolves Among Sheep proved irresistible.

The book is James Kostelniuk's account of the murders of his two children, 10-year-old Juri and eight-year-old Lindsay, and their mother Kim Anderson, his ex-wife. But it is also a condemnation of the Witness community, which he holds indirectly responsible for the killings, and which shunned him even at a memorial service for his children.

Kostelniuk is no born writer, but while his words are often clumsy, they are always honest and heartfelt as he recounts his childhood, joining the Jehovah's Witnesses, his marriage to Kim, their divorce and why he left the church. But most of all, the author's passion shows as he describes the events leading up to the murders, and the aftermath: Kim's marriage to another Witness, Jeff Anderson; how Anderson misrepresented himself; how he harrassed Kim after she finally left him; how he took a shotgun and killed her, Juri and Lindsay, and the hell Kostelniuk has gone through ever since.

Throughout this horrifying tragedy, the Jehovah's Witness community was a constant, sinister presence. The church's harsh rules and bizarre beliefs (they predict the end of the world, but have to keep changing the date when the end doesn't come on the appointed day) make me wonder not why anyone would leave, but why anyone would join in the first place.

Kostelniuk decided to move back to his native Manitoba after the breakup of his marriage, leaving his children with their mother in British Columbia. He clearly loved his kids, but moved away because he knew he has no hope of getting custody or even spending any time with them; the powerful church -- Kim was still an avid follower-- would make sure of that. There is a Witness taboo against associating with anyone who has left the fold or otherwise broken church rules and been "disfellowshipped" -- even if it's your parent, child or sibling.

When Kim tried to leave Anderson, he had the church elders intervene; they told her to stay with her ne'er-do-well husband. So she remained in a dangerous situation because, it seems, she was more afraid of the church's wrath than she was of her obsessed and abusive husband.

Eventually, she did leave, but Anderson, unable to accept her decision, murdered his estranged wife and stepchildren in cold blood in 1985.

When Kostelniuk and his new wife, Marge, travelled to Burnaby, B.C., for a memorial service for Kim, Juri and Lindsay, no one acknowledged their presence at the Kingdom Hall. Some, including Kostelniuk's former in-laws, did speak to the couple privately, but these secretive shows of sympathy did little to alleviate the grief and anger brought on by the public humiliation.

Wolves Among Sheep is Kostelniuk's valiant attempt to make sense of the tragedy that tore his life apart. His journey to find some semblance of peace in his heart and his mind took Kostelniuk through rage, guilt, denial and even an admirable attempt at forgiveness -- he maintained a correspondence with Anderson and even visited him in prison once before coming to the undeniable conclusion that the killer is a dangerous, remorseless, hopeless case.

In an eloquent epilogue, Kosteniuk writes: "While there is a wound inside me that will never heal, some living, healthy part of me wants to show that I'm not finished. I still need to share the load with others, and each person takes a little weight from me."

Wolves Among Sheep is achingly sad and intensely personal, but speaks to all decent persons. One would have to be cold-hearted indeed to read this book without wanting to help Kostelniuk bear that terrible weight.

________________________________________

Trader commits suicide after killing 12 in gun spree

Manhunt ends as he turns gun on himself

Links, reports and background on US shootings and gun law

News Unlimited staff and agencies

Friday July 30, 1999

The Guardian

A gunman stormed two brokerages in Atlanta's financial district yesterday, fatally shooting nine people after apparently killing his wife and two children in the days leading up to the attack, the city's mayor said.

Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell said Mark Barton, 44, an internet stock trader, committed suicide five hours after the shooting spree at brokerages All-Tech Investments and Momentum Securities, located near each other on Atlanta's bustling Piedmont Avenue.

Witnesses told police that Barton was apparently unhappy over stock and bond market losses when he walked into the first brokerage and opened fire.

"I hope this doesn't ruin your trading day," he said before he opened fire, according to one witness.

"He was apparently a day trader at a brokerage firm and was concerned about financial losses," the mayor said. "He was there, noticed the market was down and pulled out a gun and began shooting."

Barton, an ex-chemist, had given up his former profession to try his luck as a "day trader", buying and selling stocks on the internet.

After the spree Barton had gone on the run, reportedly carrying two handguns, one 9mm and the other .45 calibre. Police said he was later pulled over at a petrol station where he shot himself.

When Thursday's rampage ended, four people were dead in a brokerage office at Piedmont Centre and five at the second brokerage, Mr Campbell said. Twelve other people were shot and wounded.

The identities of the victims were withheld until all of their relatives could be identified.

The afternoon of horror in this booming capital of the New South was the latest in a series of fatal shootings in US schools, public buildings and offices. They include the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in April, when two teenage gunmen shot to death 12 other pupils and a teacher before killing themselves.

It was also the worst mass shooting in Atlanta this century, Atlanta police said. Two weeks ago, a woman, her four children and her sister were killed by her boyfriend, who turned the gun on himself in the worst previous single attack.

After the shootings police went to Barton's house in Stockbridge, where they found the bodies of Barton's wife and children, a 7-year-old girl and 12-year-old boy. The children were found in their beds. Barton had left hand-written notes on all three bodies.

The notes suggested that Barton's wife might have been killed on Tuesday and the children on Wednesday. Barton had apparently bludgeoned them to death.

Five years ago, Barton was considered a suspect in the death of his first wife and his mother-in-law, but he was never charged with their murders. The two women were bludgeoned to death at a campsite in Alabama. Barton, who had taken out a $600,000 insurance policy on his 35-year-old first wife just weeks before, said he was in Atlanta at the time.

Yesterday's shooting spree is likely to inflame the US debate on firearms. The city of Atlanta sued 15 gun makers and two trade associations in February, seeking damages for crime deaths and injuries involving handgun use.

________________________________________

Re: Robert and Benjamin Moore--Wisconsin--Aug 93

________________________________________

religiousfrauds.50megs.com/jw/murdered.html

here is a summary of the page:

Roberta Moore:

I was born in Stafford Springs, Connecticut in 1949.

When I was a really young baby, the Jehovah's Witnesses came into our lives. The Jehovah's Witnesses prey upon people that are depressed, have lost someone they loved, or sometimes after someone has been involved in a very bad relationship. The Jehovah's witnesses go from door to door preaching what they say is the good news of God's kingdom.

Life as a teenager for me was very trying. All of my classmates had nice new homes, nice new cars, their parents had very good jobs, had earned a lot of money. I didn't have very many friends in school because I was a Jehovah Witness. I remember how much it used to bother me because I wasn't allowed to salute the flag and everybody else did. Saluting the flag is a real sin in their eyes. We were never taught as children about the very real emotional part of us. We were taught to live by rules and follow examples given by the watchtower.

My sister and her husband moved away from Connecticut in 1972. My Father and Mother moved up to Wisconsin too. I had just gotten through with a divorce, so I moved to Wisconsin with my young son Ron to start a new life.

Shortly after moving to Wisconsin my Mother introduced me to a man who was a Jehovah witness. I believed that my fiancé to be could save me from being destroyed, as well as I really wanted to have another baby because I love children. So I married again. It wasn't long before I had realized I made a mistake, my new husband hated my young son Ron. He completely changed from being a loving man to being a very controlling, manipulating man. It wasn't long before he took my car away. He had a cabin for us to live in that was very isolated and away from all other people. He wouldn't let us have a telephone. He wouldn't let me drive any of his vehicles. Our whole life was comprised of going to the kingdom hall of Jehovah's Witnesses; once in a while he would let me go along to the store with him to buy groceries and supplies. He wouldn't allow me to work away from him, or go to get certain training so I could get a job. He wouldn't let me work in the home care either.

I felt so trapped, and I didn't know how to get out of the situation, I stayed with it for 22 years. He was very mean to Ron and abused him many times physically. Looking back on it now, I don't know which is more addictive religion or alcohol.

We lived mostly off money I got from welfare. I also got quite a lot of food stamps.

Our marriage produced four beautiful children. They were three boys and one little girl.

On August 30th, 1993 a major life event threw me into a deep, dark depression. I left home early that morning leaving my husband in the care of our three young children. At quarter to eight in the morning he called me at my father's house and told me he couldn't find the two boys. They should be going to school on the bus. I came home, looked around the house, and then I looked around the grounds. There was no sign of the boys, then he said, "the car is missing" I looked; sure enough the car was missing.

It was a rainy day, so of course I looked for tracks in the mud. The tracks in the mud showed up plainly. I followed the tracks down the road and into the trail; the Rail Trail is an old railroad bed that the kids use for hiking, biking, and three wheeling. It is a recreational trail that stretches from Prentice to Medford. I drove back home and told my husband that the boys had driven down into the trail.

My husband took my daughter and me in his truck down Spring Road to the beginning of the trail. He left us and walked in. He told us to wait there for him. We waited anxiously in the truck for a while and I wondered what to do. At the time, I didn't pay much attention to what time it was. He was in there and I decided to get out of the truck and walk down the trail to see if I could see anything. I walked about a couple of telephone pole lengths and then I heard a gunshot. I hurried back to the truck and drove in the trail. On my way down the trail I saw my husband coming and he was crying. I got really worried then said, "Where are the boys?" He said, "they're both dead and the gun is there, they killed themselves."

Autopsy Report

On the autopsy report of Robert and Ben I will write what it says:

Ben:

Samples of dried blood from the right upper extremity aare collected at the time of the postmortem examination.

Robert:

Swabs from a small blood spot on the right forearm is obtained.

Were my boys drugged for a ritual?

1. My son Robert was shot in the left side of his head. Robert was right handed?

2. How can a ten year old have the arm reach and span to shoot himself in the head with a rifle?

3. There was a kitchen knife found at the scene of a crime. Why was is not included in the police reports?

4. The rifle purportedly used was the boys' single shot Remington that took 22 shorts. They were killed with 22 longs.

5. The police claim that one boy killed himself and then the other used the kitchen knife to pry the 'long shell casing' from the gun so he could shoot himself. Can you imagine a boy seeing his brother shot, bleeding, in agony or dead, taking the time to pry out the cartridge and continuing on with his own suicide?

6. The sheriff told me the kitchen knife was sent to the crime lab and it would reveal who was shot last. I found the knife inside the police impound yard, never having been sent to the crime lab. Why the lie?

7.Kmedia interviewed my ex-husband and he told them to interview the police. Doesn't seem the grieving father is too anxious to help....?

I know my sons were MURDERED and someone is walking around free because of the power of the WATCHTOWER and the FREEMASONS in this county.

Reverse Disfellowshipping Certificate

2009-07-16T23:23:18Z

Adam T. has created a "reverse disfellowshipping certificate" for those who would like to express their feelings on shunning when the meet regular Jehovah's Witnesses:

Various Relationship Stories Submitted By Freeminds Readers

2009-05-01T16:47:52Z

A selection of relationship stories concerning Jehovah's Witnesses. Other stories can be found at http://www.freeminds.org/life-stories/index.php

Jehovah's Travelling Salesmen - Collier's Weekly 11/2/1946

2009-04-25T15:56:53Z

From the November 2, 1946 issue of Collier’s Weekly

An abridged version of this article appeared in the January 1947 issue of Reader’s Digest

Cover Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5

Sometime, between now and 1984, Gabriel's trumpet will blow reveille for Judgment Day. That's the firm belief of some three million of your world neighbors, Jehovah's Witnesses, the amazing sect whose members refuse to vote, do jury duty, salute the flag

IN THE otherwise peaceful city of Cleveland, Ohio, August, 1946, is now remembered as The Month of the Great One-Two Punch. The second half of this punch was delivered late in August when the Ohio American Legion convention descended on the city with its horn-blowing, cab-stealing, water-squirting and other inanities. The first half was considerably more awesome. For from August 4th to August 11th, tens of thousands of members of the doorbell-ringing, tract-peddling religious organization known as Jehovah's Witnesses poured into town from all over the world. They came by jalopy, bus, boat, train and plane for their first international convention since before the war.

On the afternoon of August 4th, at the Municipal Stadium. the Cleveland Indians were playing a Sunday-afternoon double-header with the New York Yankees. The Jehovah's Witnesses were sprawled around outside the stadium waiting for the game to end so they could start their convention. They were getting restive. A single game was all right, but a double-header was enough to try even the most canonical of Witness patience. Suddenly, however, the skies grew dark and a thundershower burst on the stadium. The second game was postponed and the Witnesses filed into the stadium. Strangely enough, ten minutes later the sun was shining again.

Another miracle was that in a city suffering from an acute housing and food shortage, the Jehovah's Witnesses were able to find shelter and meals for a population totaling more than that of Cleveland Heights, the city's largest suburb. Before the convention opened, an advance guard of Jehovah's Witnesses swept through the town, block by block and house by house, until more than 60,000 rooms had been obtained. Then they took over an old government trailer camp in the western outskirts and began to construct their own tent and trailer city, complete with water, electricity, sewers and latrines.

By the time the convention had opened, they had set up an incredibly efficient cafeteria in Cleveland's huge underground Exposition Hall, in which 50,000 Witnesses were served two meals a day. When food ran short in Cleveland, they brought in their own from out of town--by the carload. They had their own cooks, carpenters, bakers, plumbers, police-men, firemen, lawyers, tinsmiths, doctors, nurses, auto mechanics and barbers—-all Jehovah's Witnesses and all lending their $10 to $50 a day talents to the faithful for nothing.

The Witnesses divided greater Cleveland into 11,733 districts, organized platoons and squads for each district and covered every single doorstep and street corner in the city with Witness literature. When the convention was in its last day, they set up an assembly-line bathhouse arrangement at Edgewater Amusement Park on Lake Erie, and mass-baptized 2,602 new converts. This service was complete with nurses to watch babies, special receptacles for the temporary storing of false teeth, and bottles of port wine as an antidote for the chilling waters of the lake.

When the convention ended, the city gave the Witnesses a month to clean up their area. The Witnesses were gone inside of three days.

All these, however, are minor miracles. The most wondrous things of all were (a) the attendance figures--83,000 delegates by actual count, probably the largest religious conclave in the history of the United States; and (b) the fact that this convention was held at all.

To refresh your memory, the Jehovah's Witnesses' record of persecution for their religious beliefs was unequaled during the war and the years immediately preceding the war. Because they believe that they owe allegiance to the Kingdom of God first, and the governments of men second, they refuse to vote, serve on juries or perform any other of the normal duties of citizenship.

(photo caption) When a baseball game was rained out in the Cleveland Municipal Stadium some 83,000 delegates poured into the stands at the convention of Jehovah's Witnesses - CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER

Because the Bible to them supersedes any man-made laws, and because the Bible says, "Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image . . . thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them," they refuse to salute any flag, raise their arm in any heil or their fist in any symbol of the class struggle.

As a result the Jehovah's Witnesses were accused of being pro-Axis in the Allied countries, and of being pro-Allied in the Axis countries. In Germany, they were among the first to be thrown into Hitler's concentration camps in 1933, and in 1945, when U.S. troops found them in Dachau and Oranienburg, stilt refusing to heil, they were in pitiful physical and mental shape.

In Canada, the organization was outlawed completely. In England, some of its leaders were thrown into jail. In South Africa nearly the entire membership was sent to labor camps in southern Rhodesia. In Finland, the Witnesses first underwent German concentration camps and starvation diets, and then a Russian hostility which forced them to congregate by candlelight in underground meeting halls.

(photo caption)Varied dunking uniforms appear in the mass baptism-Cleveland Press

(photo caption)There was no racial problem at the immersion ceremonies in the water of lake Erie during the convention-Cleveland Press

(photo caption)Crowded into jail cells in Monessen Pa., are dozens of Witneses who protested the closing of a sect school.-International

The United States, shamefully enough, was no better than any of these. On June 29, 1941, for instance, Charles Jones, C. A. Cecil and eight other young Jehovah's Witnesses from Mt. Lookout, West Virginia, drove to near-by Richwood, West Virginia, "to distribute literature of the said religious sect." Three of the Witnesses stopped off at the Town Hall to inform the mayor of the nature of their work and to request police protection.

Instead of the mayor, they were met by an angry reception committee from the Richwood American Legion Post, among whom were Martin L. Catlette, a deputy sheriff, and Bert Stewart, the chief of police. A mob of 1,500 persons gathered outside the Town Hall, in the meantime, and soon other members of the American Legion post, headed by one Louis Haber, had rounded up the other seven Witnesses and brought them to the mayor's office. Catlette then took charge. He produced several quart bottles of castor oil, and in the best Mussolini tradition, forced the Witnesses to drink tight ounces each. One Witness, who protested, was made to drink a double dose. While the Witnesses squirmed in agony, they were then tied to a long rope and marched by the hoodlum mob to the Richwood post office. In a touchingly patriotic ceremony, Catlette thereupon recited the preamble to the American Legion Constitution, and everybody present was forced to salute the flag. An hour or so later, as the resultant circuit court decision goes on to say, "the Jehovah's Witnesses were marched through the streets of the town of Richwood and out of its corporate limits, yet attached to the rope."

This case was unique in than it was the only one in which the perpetrators were punished. Catlette was haled before a federal court and sentenced to twelve months in jail plus a thousand-dollar fine, while Stewart, the chief of police, was fined $250. In hundreds of other cases, however, Witnesses attempting to preach their Gospel were beaten, shot, tarred and feathered; their literature and meeting places burned; their children expelled from public schools, and approximately 4,000 of them sent to prison because they claimed they were ministers of the Gospel and therefore not subject to Selective Service.

A reporter of the Little Rock, Arkansas, Arkansas Gazette watched a mob attack a Jehovah's Witness meeting hall and mercilessly beat men and women senseless with blackjacks and screw drivers. In Imperial, Pennsylvania, on July 11, 1942 the volunteer fire department clubbed seven witnesses nearly to death, and were loading the limp bodies into the fire truck for a lynching party, when the Pennsylvania state police came along to break up the festivities.

In West Jefferson, Ohio, a Mayor Stone turned several Witnesses over to a mob and said, according to an affidavit filed with the United States Justice Department, "We don't care for the Supreme Court, and the Constitution don't apply here."

Methods Compared to Hitler's

This nation-wide violence became so widespread that on June 2, 1941, Attorney General Francis Biddle had to excoriate state and county officials all over the country. "Where these officials should have been active In preventing this cruel persecution," he said, "they have in many instances permitted it to occur and in some have been the leaders of the mob. And this betrayal of the rights of citizens," the Attorney General went on, "is done in the name of patriotism, and failure to salute the flag is made an excuse to desecrate the principles of which the flag is a symbol. Hitler's methods cannot preserve our Democracy."

This world-wide persecution makes the recent Jehovah's Witnesses' Cleveland convention a remarkable event. Instead of being wiped out by the persecution, the Witnesses have thrived on it. Where 25,000 delegates turned up for the last prewar convention in Detroit in 1940, more than 83,000 attended the conclave in Cleveland. The 1940 American membership was estimated at a rather insignificant 44,000 and the world membership at well under a million. Today, the unofficial figures (no official membership records are released by the organization) are something like 500,000 in the United Stales and nearly three million all over the world.

The Jehovah's Witnesses' doctrines are basically very simple. Like most doctrines, they become complicated in their interpretation and application. The name of the society (they never refer to themselves as a sect) comes from the 43d Chapter of Isaiah which says, "Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and my servant whom I have chosen . . . therefore ye are my witnesses . . . that I am God."

The Witnesses therefore are down-to-earth fundamentalists, which means that they believe and follow only what is written in the Bible. For this reason, they go from door to door selling their pamphlets and playing their religious phonograph records, since this house-to-house method is the only one Christ and His disciples originally used to spread Christianity (Acts 20:20 and Luke 8:1). For this reason, too, they are against all organized religion, since they can find no justification for a church or a hierarchy of any kind in the Bible. One of their chief slogans is "Religion is a racket" and they fire it indiscriminately at the Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Hindu and Moslem churches alike.

Their most persistent target for many years has been the Roman Catholic Church. The Witnesses always hasten to point out that they have nothing against individual Catholics as such, but only the Roman Catholic hierarchy. For a long time, the Catholic Church bitterly opposed the Witnesses from the pulpit. Now, however. the official policy is to ignore them—-presumably the old psychology that if you leave a buzzing fly alone, eventually it will go away.

The Jehovah's Witnesses' concept of history explains many of their inflammatory practices, they believe that shortly after the Biblical Creation, Satan and God began the struggle for men's bodies and souls. At first, the tussle was pretty evenly matched, with Abel "witnessing" for Jehovah, and the Devil in Cain's corner. But men being what they are, the evil ones became more and more in the majority until God finally had to start over again with the Flood and Noah. This didn't stop the Devil, however, and he immediately bounced back with Nimrod-—the father of all earthly governments, which like religion, the Witnesses classify as demonism and pure instruments of Satan.

The Witnesses prophesy that suddenly, on some day between now and the year 1984. Gabriel's trumpet will blow. Christ's voice then will announce in loud tones that the final end is at hand, and God's hosts will descend from the heavens to fight the Battle of Armageddon with Satan's overwhelming numbers. God, of course, will win this battle and the "Great Theocracy" will then be established on earth. God will rule instead of men, and the only human beings left to enjoy this rule will be Jehovah's Witnesses.

The Witnesses feel that the atomic bomb may be the instrument with which Satan's hosts will be eliminated from the earth.

It is their exclusive claim to real estate in the impending Kingdom of God that gets the Witnesses into so much trouble. They consider that they are the sheep and all others in the world are the goats. They believe that their mission in this period just before Armageddon is to do as much "goat-gathering" as possible, so that the population of the next world will not he too sparse for comfort. That's why they devote endless hours every week, ringing doorbells, politely playing phonographs, and handing out tracts on street corners.

Goats—Benevolent and Hopeless

For purposes of identification, all we goats are split up into a Jehovah's Witness caste system. There are (a) men-of-good-will goats and (b) goats who are considered hopeless. The men-of-good-will goats are those whom the Witnesses are instructed to seek out in juries and on the bench, when they are haled into court. They also are those who show the slightest friendliness or interest when the phonograph gospel plays on ithe front porch. Such goats are noted in a little book for a return visit. The utterly hope-less goats include priests, newspapermen, general cynics, and the strong-arm men who bounce the Witnesses around.

The Witnesses do not believe in purgatory, paradise, or the immortality of the soul. When you are dead, they say, you're dead. But on the close-at-hand Day of Judgment, all of the faithful Witnesses front Abel on down will be resurrected to enjoy the fruits of the Kingdom of God.

That's what the Witnesses late leader, Joseph F. Rutherford, meant when he coined their most popular slogan, "Millions now living will never die."

This doctrine, from the point of view of popular appeal, is a sort of spiritual Communism. Like the Communists, they hold out a picture of better things to come to the ragged, underprivileged peoples of the earth. Roger Baldwin, distinguished head of the American Civil Liberties Union, developed this analogy. Baldwin, with the aid of some of America's best-known lawyers, has helped defend the Witnesses in court since the last war and probably knows them better than any other outsider.

"Together with the Communists," says Baldwin, "the Jehovah's Witnesses are a gauge of the world's despair and disgust with civilization. The Communists promise despairing people immediate reform and privileges here on earth. The Witnesses promise them immediate reform and privileges in a Next World which is just around the corner. That's what draws in the converts."

There are other analogies to Communism as you go down the line. In order to advance their doctrine, the Jehovah's Witnesses own and run radio station WBBR in Brooklyn, and turn out more than 1,500,000 books, 11,000,000 pamphlets, 12,000,000 magazines and 150,000 phonograph records every year, all in 88 languages. During the period from 1919 to 1946, the Witnesses claim they printed and sold the incredible total of 468,000,000 books and pamphlets.

All this printing, recording and broad-casting is done in a modern eight-story factory in Brooklyn. This plant is staffed by every conceivable type of technician and executive, all of whom are Jehovah's Witnesses and all of whom live in a seven-story modern apartment building owned by the society on a pleasant Brooklyn street overlooking New York's East River.

These "headquarters servants"—-and there are nearly a thousand of them—-work for exactly ten dollars a month, which is labeled "expense money." All their other needs are filled by other Witnesses living at the headquarters. They have their own chambermaids, their own dining room, their own laundry, their own tailor shop. Their food is produced by Jehovah's Witnesses working on farms owned by the society and scattered around the country. There are also the Gilead Bible School of advanced training for full-time ministers at South Lansing, New York, and the 39 branch offices of the society in other countries all over the world.

Food and Expenses—$5

Missionaries to lands where there are no branch offices are given five dollars a month for food and other expenses. They are allowed to keep the "contributions" they receive for the literature they hand out. Jehovah's Witnesses have no churches. Their local societies are called "company organizations" and their meeting places, whether an elaborate ex-hospital as in Little Rock, Arkansas, or a grass hut in the Mysore jungle, are called "kingdom halls." On Sunday nights, and sometimes on weekdays, all the "servants" gather to discuss a Bible lesson, as handed down to them by the Brooklyn headquarters, and to sing their own hymns. In the daytime, the "publishers," as they are called, go around from house to house "witnessing" or "exchanging for a contribution" the pamphlets and books which they have already bought from the society at five cents per pamphlet and twenty cents per book. The ideal work week for "publishers" according to the society is "five days devoted to God, and one day to secular work."

A fairly typical Witness is thirty-nine year-old Michael Kusek, a Schenectady, New York, farmer who was born in Poland and came to this country at the age of five. For years, Kusek was a pious Roman Catholic. His family was studded with priests and nuns, and he himself served as a regular choirboy in his parish church. Then one day he happened to pick up a copy of the Watchtower, the Jehovah's Witnesses' weekly magazine. That's when the fireworks started. Kusek got into one religious argument after another with his mother, and finally he had to leave his home and his church. He met and married a Glens Falls, New York, music teacher who came from a solid' Presbyterian family.

For years, Kusek's wife, Joyce, tried to get her husband to forget his fanatic devotion to Biblical prophecy. She took him to see minister friends of hers. She sat in on all of Kusek's arguments with the ministers, and as a result, she seems to have become converted herself. The Kuseks thereupon brought up their two sons to be Jehovah's Witnesses like them-selves.

For a while, the Kuseks continued to live as they did before, on their comfortable 40-cow dairy farm. Witnessing was an afternoon and evening side line. But suddenly, in 1941, Kusek deliberately sold all but a few of his cows, and now the family devotes nearly all of its waking hours to the cause. Kusek grows his own vegetables on his farm now, but that's all. The rest of the time he's at the local kingdom hall or out witnessing. He hires himself out to neighboring farmers for a few weeks each year and the family subsists on the few hundred dollars that brings in.

Kusek's once-prosperous farm is now a tourist camp for all passing Jehovah's Witnesses—-for free. They set up house-keeping there, grow their own gardens, and stay as long as they like.

Of all the Witnesses I met, most were as poor or poorer than the Kuseks. When 83,000 of them descended on Cleveland in their jalopies and beat-up trucks, the inevitable comparison with an Okie migration was made. Moreover, Department of Justice figures indicate that less than one per cent of the group has had a college education while fifteen per cent have lees than grammar schooling. Yet at the Cleveland convention, there were hundreds of well-dressed, beautiful girls, dozens of Witnesses in Cleveland's finest hotel suites, 100 doctors, 250 nurses, a Mrs. Dodd who left her 16-suite apartment house in London to fly to the convention by Clipper, and the senior engineer at a leading Middle West radio station. Mixed in with this heterogeneous mass was a goodly sprinkling of Negroes and hundreds of converted Jews.

Once a year, all of these conglomerate Witnesses (providing they have made a contribution of at least ten dollars) are allowed to vote for the board of directors, who in turn select the society's officers. No one is ever elected to the board of directors but the previous board of directors, or any newcomers the board of directors might designate. Only once was there a revolt on the board of directors, and those insurgent gentlemen were purged and excommunicated so fast that their personal belongings were out on the street before the meeting ended. There was a minor revolt of the rank and file at the Cleveland convention. A group of eight old-time pioneer Witnesses, led by fifty-nine-year-old Roy D. Goodrich, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a member since 1919, tried to get up on the floor and accuse the board of directors of hypocrisy and of "setting up a dictatorship to rule the Witnesses," and of "establishing the same sort of religious hierarchy as the Roman Catholic hierarchy they condemn."

Brother Goodrich and company were excommunicated by personal letter before the hour was out. They tried to plead their case by distributing handbills outside the stadium. The rebels were immediately surrounded by 200 Witnesses who deliberately cut the canvas bags of Watchtowers from the insurgents' shoulders—very much like the public stripping of buttons and insignia from the uniform of a disgraced and court-martialed French army officer.

The board of directors of Jehovah's Witnesses live in unpretentious suites at the Brooklyn headquarters, and eat in the barely furnished common dining hall with the headquarters servants. They hand down instructions and interpretations of the Bible to the Witnesses, and they are responsible for running the radio station, the printing of the millions of publications, the fifty-two branch offices in the United States and foreign countries, the society's missionaries in countries where offices are not yet established, the society's farms and the Watchtower Bible School of Gilead, where Witnesses are schooled for positions of command in the organization.

A Home For The Prophets

The board of directors also run a $75,000 mansion in San Diego, California, which was constructed during the regime of Judge Rutherford for the exclusive occupancy of King David, Moses, Samuel and the other prophets when they return to earth. This mansion is called Beth Sarim (the House of the Princes) and it is complete with Middle Eastern architecture and palm trees so that the prophets will feel completely at home. In the meantime, to prevent Beth Sarim from becoming moldy with disuse, the board of directors use it as their own winter vacation rest spot.

Because of outward signs like this, and because of the obviously huge income from the millions of publications every year, the board of directors have often been accused of using Jehovah's Witnesses as a personal racket. There is no evidence to support these charges. The leaders actually live in lower middle-class simplicity, and the first president of the society, Charles Taze Russell, left exactly $200 in his will when he died in 1916. He had been the owner of a chain of haberdashery stores and a very wealthy man at one time.

The same thing is true of Judge Joseph F. Rutherford, the second president. A few years ago, Roger Baldwin of the American Cavil Liberties Union became one of the few men outside of the board of directors to get some official notion of the organization's finances. Baldwin is convinced that the million-dollar profit of that particular year was almost completely eaten up by foreign publication losses, administration expenses and the tremendous legal expenses necessary to defend the Witnesses in courtrooms.

Russell and Rutherford were the two outstanding figures in the history of Jehovah's Witnesses, which got under way in 1872, when Russell, then a fairly prosperous young Pittsburgh haberdasher—and a Presbyterian by religion —organized a Bible class in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, to "begin a thorough study of the Scriptures and come to a clearer understanding of many fundamental doctrines of Christianity which have been lost sight of since the days of organized religion, A.D. 325 and thereafter." From this obscure beginning developed Zion's Watchtower Tract Society, the corporation name of Jehovah's Witnesses,

Russell's personal interpretations of the Bible now have become Jehovah's Witness dogma. In addition, he organized the system of "witnessing" from door to door, the local Kingdom Hall and company organization setup, the Brooklyn headquarters from which traveling representatives went forth to keep the company organizations in line, and the Witnesses' foreign branches which still are officially known as the International Bible Students' Association.

When "Pastor" Russell died suddenly in 1916, it looked for a while as if the organization would fall apart. But after just a few months of confusion, the mantle dropped onto the broad shoulders of "Judge" Joseph Franklin Rutherford, an obscure Missouri lawyer, who, after his conversion in 1909, had become the attorney for the organization.

Tall, portly, senatorial-looking, stentorian-voiced Rutherford gave the movement the personality it needed. Soon Russell was all but forgotten, and his followers, who had called themselves "Russellites," were expressly forbidden to use that term. Everything was done in the name of Judge Rutherford, the tracts were all his personal messages, the Watchtower became filled with his personal opinions and the newly acquired radio station WBBR spent 90 per cent of its broadcasting time propelling his booming voice into the metropolitan New York ether.

Like Russell, Rutherford quickly seized upon technological developments to advance his doctrine, and as early as 1927, the Judge had a coast-to-coast network of 53 stations to carry his basso profundo pronouncements to the goats. This network grew to the astonishing number of 403 stations in 1933.

But The Voice Wasn't Silenced

When protests from the clergy forced most of these stations to drop Rutherfurd's lectures, he embarked on a new project—phonograph records and sound trucks. Rutherford made portable phonographs and recordings of his lectures in the Brooklyn factory and sold them to the servants, to assist them in witnessing. The sound-truck equipment cost the disciples $140 each, the phonographs $10 and the recordings seventy cents. Thus a whole generation of Americans became familiar with the booming voice of Judge Rutherford on the front porch.

Rutherford first instituted the name, "Jehovah's Witnesses" in 1931. He also set the Witnesses' pattern of refusing to serve in the army of any government but God's, when he was sentenced to the Atlanta penitentiary for counseling draft evasion in World War 1. Judge Rutherford died at Beth Sarin on January 8, 1942, after twenty-five years as president of the society.

When Rutherford died, the current president, quiet, colorless Nathan Homer Knorr was elected to fill his place. Knorr, who was converted to Jehovah's Witnesses when he was a schoolboy in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, came to the Brooklyn publishing plant as a downy-checked, eighteen-year-old shipping clerk in 1923, and rose to he general manager of the vast enterprise. He is not the new Great Personality. That distinction seems to belong to a fairly recent convert named Hayden C. Covington, an ex-San Antonio lawyer who now functions, as Rutherford once did, as the society's legal counsel.

Hayden Covington is a tall, drawling, handsome, wise-cracking, back-slapping Texan in a wide-brimmed felt hat, whom Roger Baldwin describes as one of the most resourceful lawyers in the country today. The thirty-five-year-old lawyer joined up in San Antonio and, because of his already glowing legal reputation there, he was immediately whisked to the Brooklyn headquarters to take over the legal department which Rutherford had dominated for so many years.

He soon had plenty to do. From 1941 to 1946 Covington personally handled over 4,200 Jehovah's Witness cases in the state and federal courts, 35 of them before the U.S. Supreme Court itself. Nearly all the higher motif cases were a one-man Covington show. According to Roger Baldwin, Covington files brilliant briefs spiced with Scripture, conducts a rapid-fire defense of the Witnesses involved, and immediately takes off by train or plane for the next case which might be a thousand or so miles away. His schedule sometimes involves as many as six cases a week. He argues all the Supreme Court cases personally and he is famed as one of the few lawyers consistently able to sass Supreme Court justices and get away with it.

Because of his work in the courts these past five years, Covington has done much for the society. In 1942, for instance, three West Virginians, named Walter Barnette, Paul Stull and Lucy McClure, were threatened with prosecution by the state authorities if they did not force their children to salute the flag in school as required by state law. This was just another of the hundreds of flag-salute persecutions which had plagued the Witnesses, and in a world-publicized case, the Supreme Court had ruled against them. Hopeless as the case looked, Covington spotted an opening.

He knew that in that Supreme Court ruling, the decision had gone against the Witnesses by an overwhelming eight to one vote. But he knew that Justices Jackson, Black and Murphy had openly changed their minds and now felt that they had wrongfully oppressed a minority. That would close the eight to one down to five to four. Then Wiley Rutledge replaced James F. Byrnes on the bench, and because of Rutledge's past record as a judge, Covington knew he now had that vital vote. He immediately slammed through the Barnette case, as it is now known in history books.

The victory came even sooner than he expected. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge John F. Parker reversed the original Supreme Court eight to one decision and when the astounded school board appealed to the Supreme Court, positive of a reversal in their favor, the Supreme Court upheld Covington five to four just as he had figured. This was the final word on flag saluting. It is now illegal for any school board anywhere in the country to force children to do anything against their religious principles.

After many years of defeats on the question of distributing the Jehovah's Witness literature without interference from the local gendarmerie, Covington spotted the same sort of opening and settled another vital point once and for all. A Witness named Murdoch was arrested in Jeannette, Pennsylvania, for violating an ordinance against peddling religious pamphlets without a license.

In the most recent decision on this matter, the Supreme Court had upheld a similar ordinance in Opelika, Alabama, by a vote of five to four. But now Wiley Rutledge was on the bench and Covington knew that Justice Rutledge had vehemently ruled against just such an ordinance when he was a circuit court judge in Washington, D. C. Covington rushed the Murdoch case up through the federal courts until it hit the Supreme Court, and surely enough, he got the expected five to four decision in his favor. The court ruled that distributing tracts is as much a part of freedom of religion as going to church, and that closed the issue once and for all.

Other Rights Legally Upheld

Little by little Covington cleaned up the side issues. He got a Supreme Court decision upholding the right of the Witnesses to ring doorbells, another upholding their rights to "witness" in company towns, and another enabling them to distribute pamphlets on government property. In one case, he got several Witnesses reinstated to their jobs in a plate-glass factory in Pittsburgh, after their fellow workers had walked out because the Witnesses refused to salute the flag.

Most of Covington's cases involved the 4,000 or so Witnesses who went to prison because their draft hoards refused to classify them as full-time ministers, which they insisted they were, and tried to send them into the Army instead. These Witnesses were a problem to the government because few of them would even go to conscientious objector camps. "We're not against war," they said. "We just want to keep on witnessing for Jehovah, which is our only function on this earth." Covington at least was able to get a decision making the draft board's classifications reviewable by the federal courts.

And with the help of 33 of America's leading clergymen (including Bishops McConnell, Harman and Baker) who were lined up by the American Civil Liberties Union to back the plea, he also seems to have wrung paroles and maybe a general amnesty from President Truman for the thousands of Witnesses still in jail a year after V-J Day.

Covington has suffered just two defeats in all these cases. He was licked in the Sarah Prince case when the Supreme Court ruled that child labor laws superseded freedom of the press when the Witnesses sent a nine-year-old child onto a rainy Brockton, Massachusetts, street to peddle tracts. And in the Chaplinsky case, the Court ruled that it was not freedom of speech for one Walter Chaplinsky to inform a Rochester, New Hampshire, cop that he was a "damned racketeer and a damned Fascist and the whole government of Rochester are Fascists and agents of Fascists." Not even Covington could do anything about that.

In the entire Jehovah's Witness picture, however, the momentous court decisions are the important thing. They probably will be remembered long after Jehovah's Witnesses become extinct, which might very well happen if too many Armageddons fail to arrive on schedule. As Roger Baldwin put it, "By contesting in the courts every restriction on them, these Jehovah's Witnesses have rendered a great service to American liberties. They've won for you and me a degree of freedom we've never had before. In serving what they conceive to be the cause of God, they have served the cause of their fellow men, whom they abhor."

Alan Feurbacher's email to Joel Engardia of Knocking.org

2008-12-02T11:58:56Z

Hi Joel,

Having been born and raised a Jehovah's Witness, I was interested to learn recently of your upcoming PBS film KNOCKING. I've long been a fan and supporter of PBS for its superior and informative programming, and my email to you is in the spirit of keeping up PBS's high standards.

MY BACKGROUND

First a bit of background on me. My family has been involved with the Witnesses since my paternal grandfather, in 1918, stood overnight on his porch with a shotgun, protecting a near-dead Bible Student colporteur who had been tarred and feathered in his small Oklahoma town of Shattuck. The townsmen were caught up in the fever of WWI and did their patriotic "duty". Grandpa never became a Bible Student, but grandma did in 1920, and was, using Jehovah's Witness jargon, "of the anointed". My dad was born in 1917, and grandma nearly died of the Spanish influenza while carrying him. He became a member of the Brooklyn Bethel staff in 1938 and stayed there until he married my mom (born 1927) in 1946. He quickly rose up the Bethel ladder, and became friends with a number of men who today are top Watchtower officials. Today the President and Vice President of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania remember my dad fondly. He died in 2001.

I was born in 1951, and of course was brought up in the Witness religion. In 1954, Barbara Anderson (who wrote you a few days ago) was a 14-year-old who appeared at the Kingdom Hall in Hempstead, New York, where my family attended JW meetings. My dad was the Congregation Servant. My mom befriended Barbara and they remained close friends until Barbara left the JWs around 1997. Today she's like my big sister.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Watchtower Society encouraged the JW community to believe that 1975 would probably bring the long-awaited battle of Armageddon. I didn't go to college, after graduating high school in 1969, because I was caught up in the fever of that belief. However, I went to college in 1978, after the 1975 date proved wrong. I graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982 with a BS in electrical engineering. I now have an MS in that field, and work for an international semiconductor company, designing microchips that are used in everything from cell phones and hard disk drives to Nintendos and Sony Play Stations.

While at MIT, I took an anthropology course, and had to write a term paper. I chose to write an essay upholding my belief in the JW view of Noah's Flood, using the notion taught by the Watchtower that the spread of languages from Mesopotamia after the Flood proved that it was a real, historical event. I was happy to have the use of MIT's extensive library facilities. Unfortunately, when I researched the many references in Watchtower publications to secular material that supposedly supported its teachings, I found that the majority were unusable, because they either failed to support the point being made, or even contradicted the Society's claim. Eventually I wrote a paper on a different subject, but this experience taught me that the Watchtower Society is guilty of much scholastic dishonesty. This, along with my disappointment in the failure of the Society's predictions for 1975, led to my quitting the Witnesses, for all practical purposes, by about 1980.
In 1975 I married a JW "pioneer sister". We had one daughter, born in 1985. By 1986, after my wife came to realize that I was never again going to be an active JW, she emotionally gave up on me, figuring that it wasn't worth her investment to love a man who would soon die at Armageddon. We divorced in 1994-96.
Over the years I did a great deal of research into the beliefs and history of Jehovah's Witnesses. My research completely confirmed what I had accidentally learned back in 1980 -- that the JWs as an organization are intellectually dishonest. I've been active on the Internet since 1991, learning and writing on JW-related topics and plenty of other things. Today you can find how much writing I've done by typing my name in any Net search engine.

In 1997 I married an ex-JW I had met on the Net several years earlier. In that year also, by an odd series of coincidences, I learned that Barbara Anderson had left the JWs, and we soon connected. Through her, it was confirmed for me that many rumors of mishandling child molestation issues by the Society were true. For example, in 1984, Governing Body member Leo Greenlees was convicted by the rest of the JW Governing Body of molesting a young boy. Greenlees was forced to leave Bethel but was never reported to the police, and he was assigned to be a "Special Pioneer" for the Society until his death a few years later. Since 1997, I've worked with Barbara and others behind the scenes trying to force the Watchtower Society into a position where it had to properly deal with this serious problem.

SHUNNING

As you know, JWs practice shunning. Shunning is done on both formal and informal levels. The formal level entails both "disfellowshipping" and "disassociation". In the first case, a person goes through a trial of sorts and is judged unrepentant of some sin, and then formally expelled from the JW organization. In the second case, the person is declared to have removed himself from the JW organization. In practice, the two terms amount to the same thing -- shunning of the expelled person by all JWs. Informal shunning covers a range of possibilities, from a JW simply deciding not to associate with someone, to the Society's writing a letter to a family or congregation suggesting that a person be informally shunned.

People who join the JWs are not told that they'll be required to completely shun someone they might love simply because a group of local elders applies the "disfellowshipped" or "disassociated" label to them. The practice is glossed over in the "Bible studies" leading up to formal baptism into the JW organization. Nor is a convert told that one of the baptismal vows is a legally binding one of absolute loyalty to the JW organization.

Children who are baptized as JWs -- even as young as 7 or 8 years -- are treated exactly the same as adults in terms of shunning. There are many stories of young teenagers doing the normal teenage stupid things, and ending up being shunned for life by their entire families.

I have a good deal of experience with shunning and the wrecked families it can create. My wife (and her youngest sister) has been informally shunned by her JW brother and sister since she quit the JWs in 1985 and divorced her abusive husband. About 1988, her brother wrote a letter to the Society asking how he should treat her. They told him not to pursue disfellowshipping, but to informally shun her. This has caused immense pain all around, especially to their parents, who are two of the dearest people on the planet.

In 1999, my daughter, at age 14, left her JW mother and came to live with me. She was never baptized, but is now informally shunned by the young people she grew up with, and has a strained relationship with her JW mother.

In 2002, as a result of Barbara Anderson's appearance on NBC Dateline, my JW parents (my mom and stepdad; my mom and dad were divorced in 1969) learned of my involvement with her and the Silentlambs organization. They immediately disinherited me and have shunned me ever since.

Beginning about 1997, my parents began shunning Barbara Anderson, after a friendship of more than 40 years. Her only crime? Ceasing to attend JW meetings.
This practice of shunning obviously creates much unnecessary pain and is extremely destructive. About 1994, CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) produced a documentary called "Children of Jehovah", which largely consisted of interviews with young people who quit, or were expelled from the JWs, and whose parents shunned them. One can hardly keep a dry eye watching this film. All of this shunning, of course, is done at the direction of Watchtower leaders.
My point: any proper film on Jehovah's Witnesses needs to emphasize that shunning is an odious practice and is part and parcel of being a JW.

CARTOONISH BELIEFS

I have the impression, Joel, that you were raised a JW, or at least, had a great deal of exposure to the religion while growing up. Hence your concern about showing that JWs are really not a cartoonish religion.

While JWs as individuals are certainly not cartoonish (most of my large family are JWs, so no one has to convince me of this), the Watchtower Society's beliefs and practices over the years have included many, many cartoonish images. Here is a small list, off the top of my head:

A 1961 Watchtower magazine article, "How can girls guard against temptation in this sex-crazy world?" compared the way young girls and young men interact sexually to the way cattle do. This demeaning article invokes belly laughs from non-JWs.
In the early 1950s, the long-standing teaching that God lives on the star Alcyone in the Pleiades constellation was formally jettisoned.
In the early 1950s, the long-standing claim that vaccinations are a work of the devil was abandoned. This was to facilitate travel by Watchtower officials, who had to have certificates of vaccination for international travel.
In 1945, the notion that vaccinations violate "the everlasting covenant between God and Noah" was applied to blood transfusions, and over the next decade this was gradually built into a complete ban on transfusions.
In 1929, the teaching that the Great Pyramid of Gizeh was built at God's direction and was an important marker in "Bible chronology" was changed to be that the Great Pyramid was the work of the devil.
Beginning in the 1920s, in the magazine "The Golden Age", the Society hawked all sorts of quack medical ideas, claiming that the medical establishment was a complete fraud.
In the 1920s, the Society recommended a bizzare, quack machine called "The Electronic Radio Biola" as a cure for all sorts of chronic diseases.
In 1876, the founder and first president of the Watchtower Society, Charles Taze Russell, began claiming that Christ had returned invisibly to the earth in 1874. In 1943, the Society changed this date to 1914. Russell's teaching was based on the failed prediction of his mentor, an Adventist named Nelson Barbour, that Christ would return visibly in 1874.
In 1877, Russell claimed that Armageddon would begin in 1878. When that failed to happen, he claimed it did, but invisibly.
In 1877, Russell predicted the complete end of all nations by 1914. This became a staple of Bible Student teaching. When that failed to occur, Russell's followers gradually decided that the end had occurred, but invisibly.
In 1877, Russell predicted that the long-awaited "resurrection of the saints" would occur in 1878.
In 1878, when "the saints" failed to appear, Russell predicted that they'd appear in 1881. When that failed, he claimed that they were indeed resurrected, but invisibly.
When "the end" failed to appear in 1914 but WWI began, Russell claimed that Armageddon had begun, and predicted it would end in 1918.
In 1918, Joseph Rutherford, second president of the Watchtower Society, began an advertising campaign called "Millions Now Living Will Never Die". He predicted that Armageddon would occur in 1925.
Between 1918 and 1925, many Bible Students prepared for "the end" by selling their property and engaging in preaching for the "Millions" campaign. When 1925 rolled past uneventfully, nearly 3/4 of the Bible Students quit.
After 1925, Rutherford emphasized that very soon, the "ancient worthies" such as Abraham, Samuel and David would soon be resurrected and take over the governing of the earth.
In 1929, the Society began work on a mansion for Rutherford to live in, in San Diego. This came to be called Beth Sarim.
About 1930, Rutherford formally deeded Beth Sarim to "the ancient worthies" and described how his followers should recognize them.
Beth Sarim was initially described in Watchtower publications as a home for "the ancient worthies".
Today the Society describes Beth Sarim as a home for Rutherford. According to some sources, that's probably closer to the truth, because Rutherford, as a drunk and adulterer, was a thorn in the side of his underlings.
In the early 1940s, the Society built a bomb shelter for Rutherford on a property near Beth Sarim and called it Beth Shan. They later claimed that they never built such a thing.
In 1967 the Society banned organ transplants, calling the practice cannibalism. The policy was reversed in 1979.
In 1971 the Society began teaching that the physical heart is the seat of human emotion, and carries on "conversations" with the physical brain, which determines what a person does. This teaching was illustrated at the 1971 district conventions with a giant green brain and a giant red heart on the speaker's platform, where during the introductory speech, a dialog was played with the heart and brain "talking" to one another. During the speech, the heart would light up when it "talked" and the brain would light up when it "conversed".
In 1971, the Society began a program of instructing the JW community what to do and not do sexually, in embarrassing detail. Oral and anal sex were described in public talks, and condemned. Over the next few years this resulted in the opposite of what they intended in some cases, and in others to the disintegration of marriages. After a number of lawsuits by injured non-JW marriage partners, the Society largely abandoned these teachings in the early 1980s.
In 1966, the Society began predicting that "big things" would come not later than 1975. By the next year, this had grown into a nearly definite prediction that the battle of Armageddon would come by 1975. When that failed to happen, the rapid growth of the JWs in the years between 1967 and 1975 reversed.
In 1993 to 1995, upon realizing that its teachings about "the generation of 1914" were about to go down the tubes, the Society drastically revised its ideas, and made the idea virtually meaningless. Most JWs barely noticed.
In 2002, about a week before the NBC Dateline program on child molestation problems in the JWs aired, the Society directed the elders of three congregations to disfellowship four people who were prominently to appear on the show: Barbara Anderson, William Bowen, and Carl and Barbara Pandelo. The Society claimed to the news media that the disfellowshippings had nothing to do with Dateline.

With respect to the cartoonish nature of the "1914 doctrine" of JWs, Carl Sagan made an interesting comment:

"Doctrines that make no predictions are less compelling than those which make correct predictions; they are in turn more successful than doctrines that make false predictions. "

But not always. One prominent American religion confidently predicted that the world would end in 1914. Well, 1914 has come and gone, and -- while the events of that year were certainly of some importance -- the world does not, at least so far as I can see, seem to have ended. There are at least three responses that an organized religion can make in the face of such a failed and fundamental prophecy. They could have said, "Oh, did we say `1914'? So sorry, we meant `2014.' A slight error in calculation. Hope you weren't inconvenienced in any way." But they did not. They could have said, "Well, the world _would_ have ended, except we prayed very hard and interceded with God so He spared the Earth." But they did not. Instead, they did something much more ingenious. They announced that the world _had_ in fact ended in 1914, and if the rest of us hadn't noticed, that was our lookout. It is astonishing in the face of such transparent evasions that this religion has any adherents at all. But religions are tough. Either they make no contentions which are subject to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof. The fact that religions can be so shamelessly dishonest, so contemptuous of the intelligence of their adherents, and still flourish does not speak very well for the tough-mindedness of the believers. But it does indicate, if a demonstration were needed, that near the core of the religious experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry. [Carl Sagan, _Broca's Brain,_ Ballantine Books, New York, 1982, pp. 332-3]

I've often thought that the leaders of Jehovah's Witnesses are reminiscent of the lunatic rebel leader in Woody Allen's film "Bananas", where once he got power, he instituted all sorts of lunatic changes.

I hope that my comments give you some food for thought, and that you'll take them into account as you finalize KNOCKING. In my opinion, Jehovah's Witnesses are an extremely destructive sect, because they often destroy families and long-standing friendships. Their misguided policy on blood transfusions has killed thousands of innocents. Examined critically, many of their beliefs and much of their history are cartoonish by anyone's standards.

Alan Feuerbacher

Suicide-Related Story

2009-05-01T17:14:05Z

Hi just a sad note to say that a mutual friend of my sisters and I her name is (withheld) (married with two young children) who was recently disfellowsipped by the Jehovas Witnesses in New Zealand, aged 26, because she went back to smoking, she and her husband Phil were baptised JWs, has today sadly committed suicide, (she hung herself) because she felt so condemned by the J.Dubs. She reached out to them as she thought was right and they said, they would not give her a bible study to help her.