by Pete Earley
Jeffrey said he needed more time to figure it out, but he was sure enough of his theory to teach it the next Sunday to his adult Sunday school class. When the class ended, a woman took Jeffrey aside. “While you were teaching, I saw a vision of Moses standing next to you!” she told him. Another class member said that God had given him a revelation for Jeffrey. “Thus saith the Lord, you are to continue on the path that you are on, teaching the truth.”
Jeffrey sent letters about chiasmus to the Patricks and the Averys in Independence. Both couples wrote back asking for more information. At home, he explained his discovery to Kevin Currie, who still lived with him, and Sharon Bluntschly, who continued to spend most of her time at the Lundgrens’ house.
But his biggest booster was Alice. “Maybe this is it!” she gushed. “Maybe this is the revelation you are supposed to bring forth—the one that was prophesied by the patriarch!”
There was one person who didn’t think Jeffrey was anyone special. The Reverend Dale Luffman had become the RLDS stake president in the Kirtland area in January 1986. As such, he was supposed to make sure that the twelve congregations in his stake operated smoothly and adhered to church policy. Luffman was a full-time, salaried employee of the RLDS who answered to church officials in Independence. He was not warmly welcomed at the RLDS congregation in Kirtland. The church rolls listed 150 members, but a handful of elders really ran the brick church across the street from the Kirtland temple and they were fundamentalists who considered Luffman a “liberal” sent from church headquarters to bring them into line. In their eyes, the new stake president represented everything wrong in the RLDS. He had attended another denomination’s seminary: Princeton University in New Jersey. [How, fundamentalists asked, could Luffman have learned anything by going to another religion’s school, especially one that didn’t believe in the Book of Mormon?] Worse, Luffman had received an undergraduate degree from an Oregon college run by the Roman Catholic Church. In the 1970s, he had helped organize a boycott of grapes on behalf of migrant farm workers and he had led student demonstrations against the Vietnam War. If that weren’t enough, shortly after Luffman arrived in Kirtland, he described himself as an “ecumenicist.” That meant that he didn’t believe that the RLDS was God’s only “true church.” Within days after Luffman arrived, a rumor swept through the congregation in Kirtland. Luffman had befriended a minister from another church and was thinking about joining the local ministerial alliance. To fundamentalists, such a move was blasphemy.
Luffman hardly looked a rebel. A lanky man in his early forties, he had a closely trimmed salt-and-pepper beard and thick glasses, and spoke with a stuffed-nose twang. He had grown up poor, was well read, and didn’t seem too concerned about the pomp and circumstance of organized religion. If anything, the first impression that most people had was that Luffman was pretty ordinary.
Within two weeks of his arrival, Luffman and Jeffrey clashed. It happened after Luffman preached his first sermon in the Kirtland church. He talked about how Christ’s death and His love had saved the world. After the worship service, Luffman planned to attend Jeffrey’s class, but he got delayed by a telephone call. Seconds later, as he walked down the hall to the class, he heard his name being mentioned. He paused outside the classroom and listened.
“You all heard the stake president’s sermon today,” Jeffrey announced, “and before we start, I want to talk about it.” During the next fifteen minutes, Jeffrey accused Luffman of preaching “lies.” “Our God is a God of vengeance,” Jeffrey said, “and He expects only one thing from us—repentance. Repent, repent, repent. Those who do not repent will perish.”
Luffman stepped into the classroom and took a front-row seat. Without a hint of embarrassment, Jeffrey began that day’s regular lesson. Afterward, Luffman called Jeffrey into the church office.
“Your action was completely unethical,” Luffman declared. “Everyone has a right to a difference of opinion. That’s one thing. But you’re telling people that I lied and that only you know the truth! Who are you to speak for God? What right do you have to tell people what is the truth?”
Jeffrey didn’t defend himself. He simply listened as Luffman berated him.
“I expect an apology,” Luffman finally concluded.
“I apologize,” Jeffrey said, without any visible sign of remorse. Jeffrey had never been particularly well liked in any church.
Alice was the one who always made friends quickly while Jeffrey was aloof and haughty. But the fundamentalist elders at Kirtland rallied around Jeffrey. “I think Jeffrey found in the Kirtland congregation a unique climate,” Luffman said later. “The few elders running the show saw in Jeffrey a spokesman for their point of view and Jeffrey liked to feel important. I think the two groups fed on each other.”
During the following weeks, each time that Luffman preached at the Kirtland congregation, Jeffrey rebutted the sermons line by line in the adult class. As always, he got away with it by using his amazing memory of scriptures. Rather than attack Luffman in person, Jeffrey simply recited verses that contradicted whatever Luffman had preached.
Even though Luffman was furious, there was little he could do. Jeffrey worked for Bill Lord, who reported to the office of historical sites in Independence. Luffman reported to an entirely different office. The stake president didn’t have any say over who worked at the temple.
“He’s untouchable,” Luffman complained after church to his wife, Judy. “I can’t fire him.”
There was, however, one way in which Luffman could discipline Jeffrey. The elders in the church had recommended that Jeffrey be promoted within the RLDS priesthood to the rank of elder. As stake president, Luffman got first shot at that request. He rejected it. If anything, the rejection seemed to win Jeffrey even more status.
“Jeffrey became almost a folk hero in the eyes of many fundamentalists in the church and he was gaining a tremendous following,” Alice said later. “All day, every day, we had people coming to our front door, asking to see Jeffrey. Even Mormons [LDS] invited him to speak to them about the temple. People would come and ask if they could have their picture taken with Jeffrey because of his growing reputation.”
It was about this time that someone noticed that Jeffrey’s profile resembled a photograph in the temple of a death mask that had been made of Joseph Smith, Jr., after his murder. “I had little girls who were Mormon missionaries coming to the door asking me what it was like to be married to someone who looked like the beloved Joseph Smith,” Alice said. Jeffrey found the comparison flattering and began mentioning the similarities during tours. He would tell people jokingly that he was Smith reincarnated.
As Jeffrey’s popularity increased, Luffman tried new ways to undercut him. He decided to start another adult Sunday school class in the Kirtland church in the hope that it would draw members from Jeffrey’s. It didn’t. Jeffrey turned the tables on Luffman. Fundamentalists would come to Jeffrey’s class, but would boycott church whenever Luffman preached. One Sunday, so many elders avoided the worship service that Luffman didn’t have the required number to serve communion. Luffman reacted by organizing a leadership recruitment drive, an attempt to get “new blood” onto the various church committees that ran the church. He was trying to push out the old fundamentalists. But that didn’t work either. “The situation deteriorated—fast,” Luffman recalled.
At home, Kevin noticed that Jeffrey was spending hours talking about how he would lead a revolt of RLDS fundamentalists. He’d oust Wallace B. Smith, fire Luffman, kick the women out of the priesthood, restore the “true” RLDS church, and declare himself the new president-prophet.
At work, Jeffrey became bolder. He acted as if the temple were his personal domain. When Jeffrey felt a group of elders from out of town weren’t paying attention during a tour, he belittled them. “I preached for forty-five minutes about how this temple was sacred and they had no right to come into it unless they were spiritually prepared.” Afterward, one of them agreed, but others complained.
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“You’ve got a real ego problem,” an elder told him.
One Saturday morning in late April, Jeffrey mentioned that he wanted to leave work early because he and Alice were going to an antiques show. There hadn’t been many visitors that morning, so Tom volunteered to stay at the visitors’ center until noon by himself and then lock up. Jeffrey told him not to worry about taking the money out of the cash register. “I’ll come over later and do it.”
Tom knew that Jeffrey was adamant about being the only person who counted the daily receipts at the visitors’ center. But when it was time to lock up, Tom didn’t want to leave money in the register. He was afraid that he’d be blamed if it got stolen or came up short. So Tom counted the money and compared the total to the cash register tape. The receipts and cash didn’t match. Sixty-seven dollars was missing. Tom checked his figures again, but he hadn’t made a mistake. Someone had taken sixty-seven dollars. “The only logical explanation is that Jeffrey took the cash,” he told his wife that afternoon. They agreed that Tom should give Jeffrey a chance to explain before telling Bill Lord.
On Monday morning, Tom confronted Jeffrey. “Hey, the receipts show sixty-seven dollars missing.” Tom didn’t mean it to sound like an accusation but his old police training had kicked in and that is exactly what it sounded like. “Did you take it?”
Jeffrey turned red. “We were a little short,” he replied, “so I borrowed it. I’m going to pay it back.”
“Hey, that’s stealing, Jeffrey. That is contrary to everything we are all about here.”
“No, it’s not,” Jeffrey retorted. He was going to put an IOU in the cash register, he said. He took the money because he needed to buy milk for his children. Tom didn’t believe him. The way he remembered it was that Jeffrey had left early Saturday to go to an antiques show. Tom didn’t believe Jeffrey was hard up for cash. Once Jeffrey had showed him a three-hundred-dollar hunting knife that he had bought at an antiques store. When Tom reminded him of that fact, Jeffrey said that Alice had actually taken the money. She was the thief.
“His story kept changing,” Tom said, “and it kept getting worse and worse.” Finally, Jeffrey broke into tears. “He began crying, really sobbing. . . he starts blubbering like a baby about how I couldn’t tum him in because he didn’t have anywhere else to go. He told me that I’d ruin his family and his life and his children’s lives. It was quite a tirade and it pissed me off. I told Jeffrey, ‘Hey, buddy, you made the bed, you lie in it. If this is what you are about, then I got no time for you.”’
When Tom said that he was going to tell Bill Lord about the money, Jeffrey raced out the visitors’ center door. “A few minutes later, Alice shows up and she starts pleading and starts crying too,” said Tom. “She says, ‘Oh, this will ruin our kids, please think about them,’ and I said, ‘Hey, lady, you think about it, you did it, not me.’ And then she starts telling me about how Jeffrey didn’t mean to hurt anyone and how I was going to destroy him. I was outraged that Jeffrey would send his wife over to beg me.”
Despite the pleas, Tom told Bill that Jeffrey had stolen the money. Jeffrey and Alice rushed in to speak privately with Bill as soon as Tom finished. Both were in tears. “Jeffrey told me that he had taken the money to buy bread and milk for his children,” Bill said later. “Those were almost his exact words, and I felt sorry for him.”
Bill asked Jeffrey why he was broke. “I thought you told me that you were receiving money each month as part of an inheritance,” Bill said.
“They didn’t get it to us soon enough this month, but as soon as they do, I’ll pay it back,’’ Jeffrey replied.
Bill needed time to think it over. He wanted to consult with his boss in Independence. Jeffrey and Alice left. “We had never had a tour guide who was as enthusiastic about the temple as Jeffrey was,” said Bill, “and he was a young fellow and he had a family and I felt that he deserved another chance. I felt he was truly sorry and figured it was just a minor mistake.” After lunch, Bill called Jeffrey into the office. “We’ve decided to let this go,” he said. Jeffrey would have to refund the sixty-seven dollars, but that was it.
Tom was flabbergasted when he learned that Jeffrey had gotten off the hook. What was even more incredible was that Bill had left Jeffrey in charge of the books. Tom felt betrayed. Part of the reason he had moved to Kirtland was to study with Jeffrey. He had believed he was someone special and now he felt Jeffrey was nothing but a common thief. “We could have been best friends. . . . We had gotten so far in our studies . . . and yet it clearly didn’t mean anything to Jeffrey. He knew how to say all the right words, but they didn’t mean anything to him.”
Chapter 21
HAD the Reverend Dale Luffman known that Jeffrey had been caught stealing from the cash register, he would have used that information to get him fired. But no one told Luffman. Tom Miller didn’t like him and Bill Lord didn’t feel it was any of the stake president’s business. As a result, Jeffrey’s image as a pious fundamentalist spokesman continued untarnished. A short time after the theft episode, Jeffrey was invited to speak about the temple to an RLDS congregation in Richmond, Missouri. Since the church was only a few miles from Independence, Jeffrey wrote a short letter to Richard Brand and invited him to the lecture. Cheryl Avery happened to telephone and Alice invited her too. Jeffrey’s lecture and slide show went well and afterward Jeffrey sought out Richard and thanked him for the $650 that he had given him the summer before. He also began recruiting Richard. After all, if Jeffrey planned to launch a fundamentalist revolt, he was going to need someone to lead. “God’s calling you to the temple,” Jeffrey told Richard. “When are you moving there?” Richard demurred.
Cheryl Avery and her daughters tracked down Jeffrey and Alice at the lecture. Each was carrying a cherry pie. Cheryl wasn’t that good a cook, Alice later said, and as a joke, Jeffrey had once made a big fuss about one of her cherry pies. “He had eaten one of them all by himself. So here comes Cheryl and the girls with four pies for us.” Jeffrey rolled his eyes at Alice when Cheryl wasn’t looking. Cheryl just didn’t understand.
When they returned to Kirtland, Jeffrey wrote a letter to Richard urging him to join them. Meanwhile, Jeffrey and Alice avoided Tom at the visitors’ center. Instead, they spent their time welcoming the new batch of college-age students who had come to work as summer tour guides. As promised, Danny Kraft, Jr. had returned. He had walked into the Lundgrens’ house and yelled, “Dad and Mom—I’m home!” With Danny’s help, Jeffrey had started teaching nightly classes at his house for the summer students as well as Kevin and Sharon.
On Memorial Day, Richard and Shar Olson returned with another church group just as they had in 1984 and 1985. This time, they brought Richard’s best friend, Greg Winship. Shar asked Jeffrey to give them a tour and teach a class, which he did. Only this time, Jeffrey openly declared that Kirtland was the real site of Zion.
“Are you listening, Richard?’’ Jeffrey asked in front of everyone.
Richard had just graduated from the University of Missouri and everyone assumed that he would find a job or attend graduate school, but a few days after he and the others returned to Independence, Richard announced that he was moving to Kirtland to study with Jeffrey.
“Richard had been brought up believing that religion was the most important part of your life,” Jeffrey said later. “He felt that I could help him understand the truth.” Kevin, Sharon, Danny came, in Jeffrey’s opinion, “ because they were losers or thrill seekers or because they thought they could get something from me. Richard came because he loved the truth.”
The youngest of three children and the only son of Wilmer G. and Twylia Brand, Richard grew up in what authorities would later describe as a “quintessential all-American home.” His father was an air-traffic controller, an ordained RLDS elder, and a good provider. Twylia stayed at home to look after her children. As a student at William Chrisman High School, the same Independence school that Jeffrey had attended, Brand did all the right things. He
was a member of the National Honor Society, the baseball and basketball teams, and a writer on the school newspaper. He graduated in the top 2 percent of the 1981 class and was later remembered by his classmates as being an intelligent, deeply religious, handsome student who was popular with his peers and liked by his teachers. At college, he earned a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering with a grade-point average of nearly 3.5 and was later characterized by a professor as an “outstanding young man full of potential.”
Richard arrived in a new Mitsubishi pickup truck that he had just bought. He’d gotten the money, he told Jeffrey, from the estate of his grandmother. She’d left him $17,000 in cash. He had spent $13,000 to buy the truck, brought $1,000 in cash with him, and had another $3,000 in a savings account back in Independence. It didn’t stay there long.
Originally, Richard planned to rent an apartment, find a job, and study with Jeffrey part time. But Jeffrey suggested that Richard move in with him for a while first and “get up to speed” on his scriptural studies. Richard agreed and fixed up a classroom area in the Lundgrens’ basement. Each morning, Richard would go downstairs to study. Jeffrey had taught him how to diagram chiastic verses and he was eager to discover the scriptures’ “hidden” messages. But he didn’t have much luck and he became depressed.
“I told Richard that the reason he wasn’t getting anywhere was because he was worshiping a false god,” Jeffrey recalled. “I told him that he worshiped his truck. I said, ‘You spend more time bowing down before your truck, washing and polishing it, than you do bowing down before your God,’ and after a few days, he agreed that possessions had always been too important in his life.”
Jeffrey suggested a solution.
“Sell your truck,” he said. “Get rid of your false god.”
Richard offered to sell it to Jeffrey for one dollar.
“No, you will still be driving it and worshiping it, and although we could use a dependable vehicle, the issue is that you must get rid of it because it is coming between you and God.”