by Pete Earley
Jeffrey told the women that they should “comfort” their men that night. “This is just the beginning,” he reminded them. “The scriptures say we will have to kill many, many more.”
For several minutes it was completely quiet except for the sound of crying.
“Now that the sin is gone,” Jeffrey concluded, “we can go into the wilderness and see God.”
Class was dismissed.
It was after 1:00 A.M. when everyone went to bed. Jeffrey started a fire in the bedroom fireplace and carried the trash bags with the Averys’ belongings over in front of it. He began going through them, taking whatever he wanted, burning whatever he didn’t. When he got to the drawing of the rainbow that Karen had made for Alice, he tossed it into the flame.
Neither of them could sleep when they first went to bed.
“At one point during the night,” Alice later recalled, “Jeffrey asked me if I were asleep and I said, ‘No,’ and then I said, ‘Oh, Jeff, why did you have to do it?,’ and he was quiet and then he said, ‘It was the will of God.”’
Alice didn’t reply.
“Jeffrey truly believed. He thought he was becoming divine. There was never any show of doubt. He genuinely believed that he was exactly who he said he was based on his reading of the scriptures.”
Alice lay next to him in the morning darkness with her eyes wide open and then she reached over and took his hand into her hand and held it. He gently squeezed it and fell asleep.
Chapter 42
AT precisely 9:00 A.M. on April 18, FBI Agent Robert Alvord and Chief Dennis Yarborough began briefing the sixteen special agents and six police officers who were going to descend on Jeffrey and his followers. Alvord explained that the FBI would handle the interviews, the police officers would secure the area. The agents were shown photographs that had been secretly taken of Jeffrey, Sharon, Danny, Ronald, Greg, and Damon. Agents also were given profiles of Jeffrey and some key group members that were done by the FBI Behavioral Science Unit. Alvord and Yarborough had identified eight people to interview. They were: Jeffrey, Alice, Greg, Richard, Ron, Danny, Sharon, and Debbie. Of course, anyone else at the farmhouse would be questioned, but Alvord and Yarborough felt the list covered the most important group members.
There were three families not mentioned. They were the Johnsons, the Patricks, and the Averys. No one knew anything about Keith and Kathy Johnson. Ron Andolsek had spotted their yellow Chevrolet Sierra station wagon parked at the Lundgren farmhouse on April 3 and had gotten their names by tracing their Missouri license plates, but nothing else was known about them. Shar and Kevin had talked about Dennis and Tonya Patrick. Both said that the Patricks were disliked and were considered by Jeffrey to be untrustworthy. The Avery family was on the bottom of the suspect list. When Alvord wrote a synopsis of the case on February 24 for his supervisors, he mentioned the Averys in only two sentences.
Dennis Avery, wife Cheryl, are members of the group, however, the Averys do not participate in the paramilitary activities of the group. Avery is also considered expendable by Lundgren in as much as both of them are considered to be “doubters.”
Andolsek had tried to find out more about the Avery family, but he hadn’t been successful. Seven months earlier, Andolsek had gone to the house that they rented in Kirtland but it was empty, and when he checked with the post office, he found that the Averys hadn’t left a forwarding address. No one was even certain that they were still in the area.
Near the end of the briefing, Alvord reminded the agents that Jeffrey had a large number of weapons, including assault rifles. If Jeffrey or any members of his group began shooting, the agents were to pull back and wait for help from the Cleveland FBI office. By 10:00 A.M., everyone was ready to go.
There was no one in sight at the farmhouse when Alvord and Yarborough arrived. As soon as the men stepped from their cars, Yarborough put his right hand inside his jacket. He had a snub-nosed .38 pistol there. He planned to keep it pointed at Jeffrey through his coat the entire time that he was being interviewed.
When Alvord knocked on the door, Alice answered in her bathrobe.
“We need to talk to Jeffrey,” Yarborough said.
“He’s in the barn,” she replied. “I’ll get him.”
She shut the door in their faces and ran through the house to the back door. Yarborough and Alvord raced around the side of the house. They turned the back corner just as Alice was hollering from the doorstep for Jeffrey. The two men looked away from the house toward the barn.
“I saw the fifty-caliber rifle, the huge gun, sitting out next to the window,” Alice later recalled. “So I grabbed it and carried it into our bedroom and put it under the bedcovers and made the bed real fast so you couldn’t tell it was hidden there.”
Jeffrey, Alvord, and Yarborough came into the house. Other agents, who had been told to stay away from the farm until Alvord and Yarborough had found Jeffrey, now swarmed onto the property. Richard, Danny, Damon, Dennis Patrick, and Keith Johnson were herded into the front yard and ordered to sit on the porch. “Don’t talk to each other,” an agent barked.
Sharon and Susie were in the house. Greg had left the farm earlier that morning to dispose of several trash bags that contained property from the barn that belonged to the Averys. He was dropping the bags at random in Dumpsters around suburban Cleveland. Ron and Debbie had left the farm earlier to do some last-minute grocery shopping. Kathy and Tonya, meanwhile, were at the Patricks’ apartment.
An agent hurried Alice outside and put her in a car. While she was waiting, Andolsek slid into the front seat. He had a list of questions on a clipboard. He began by telling Alice that she and Jeffrey were under suspicion for a crime that could end up with both of them receiving the death penalty.
“I froze,” Alice later said. “I thought, ‘How did they find out about the Averys!”’
Andolsek said that the FBI knew “everything.”
Alice felt faint. “I kept thinking, ‘How did they find out!”’
And then Andolsek said, “Alice, what does ‘Redeeming the vineyard’ mean?”
Alice suddenly relaxed. “I realized that he didn’t know anything about the murders the night before. He was talking about the temple takeover. I about laughed.”
Inside, Jeffrey was drawing that same conclusion based on the questions that Alvord and FBI Agent Lloyd N. Buck were asking him. “It was clear that Shar had talked to them,” he said. “I knew they didn’t have a clue about the Averys being in the barn.”
The agents asked if Jeffrey would show them his guns. Jeffrey paused. “They didn’t have a search warrant, otherwise they would have shown it to me, so I knew I could refuse to show them my guns. But I figured they’d just go get one and I had planned on leaving for the wilderness that day. I wanted them out of the house as quickly as possible.”
Jeffrey took the men into his bedroom and got out the bag with the pistols in it. They checked the weapons and then told Jeffrey that they wanted to see his rifles, including the ones that he had hidden on the second floor behind a false wall in a bedroom. Now Jeffrey was certain that Shar was the informant because she had known about that hidden chamber. Jeffrey led Alvord upstairs and opened the false wall in the closet. He took out the rifles and the agents checked to see if he had altered any of them so that they would fire automatically, a violation of federal gun laws. He hadn’t.
While the agents questioned Jeffrey, other group members were being quizzed outside. Once the group members realized that no one except them knew about the murders, the mood turned almost light- hearted.
“Yes, we have firearms,” Damon said. He volunteered that his father also had a lot of rabbits. “We are not violent people. We kill our rabbits when they are sick . . . but wrestling in the backyard is the most violent thing we’ve ever done.”
FBI agents later quoted Danny saying that he “could never kill anything, including animals.” The movie The Highlander, he added, didn’t have anything to do with Jeffrey’s teaching
s.
Richard told agents that he believed Jeffrey was “very knowledgeable” about the church, but said that he could never be considered a prophet because a prophet had to be able to perform great acts or miracles and Jeffrey hadn’t done anything like that.
Susie said that she and Ron were leaving Ohio to look for work elsewhere.
Alice also played dumb. The only guns in the house, she said, were black-powder rifles. When Andolsek asked her if Jeffrey had ever seen Christ in a vision while the couple was visiting Niagara Falls—a tidbit that Kevin had told the FBI—Alice laughed. “That’s a new one,” she said. Andolsek realized that he was wasting his time and left Alice in the car with a woman officer. Alvord had specifically assigned an FBI agent who was a member of the LOS church to interview Alice, and he took over, but he didn’t get anything useful from her either.
Shortly after the agents began questioning the group, Greg drove by the farm and spotted the police cars. His first instinct was to keep driving, but he didn’t want to look suspicious, so he parked his car and walked to the farm. Before he reached the house, he realized that he had Dennis Avery’s credit cards in his back pocket. He had thought Jeffrey might want to keep them. It was too late for him to dispose of them now. He hoped no one searched him.
Alice glanced out the window of the car and saw Greg coming. She looked over to where the FBI had lined up the men. “Dennis Patrick and Keith Johnson were in la-la land,” she recalled. “They were in total shock and scared to death. But when I looked at Richard, he gave me the thumbs up. He and Damon and Danny were acting like really cool dudes.”
Alice announced that she wanted a glass of water and a woman agent escorted her from the car into the kitchen. The agent opened the cupboard and gave Alice a glass. Greg came in to get a drink too. “Greg opened the refrigerator and said, ‘Gee, Mom, we’re almost out of milk. Don’t you think I should go get some for lunch?’ I didn’t catch on at first, but then I said, ‘Yes, you’d better go.’ They let Greg leave and he immediately went looking for Debbie and Ron to warn them not to come home.”
Greg flagged them down a few miles from the farm and warned them. “Ron and I just started driving around,” Debbie recalled. Greg, meanwhile, dropped Dennis Avery’s credit cards into a trash bin behind a convenience store.
Alvord wasn’t learning anything useful from Jeffrey. Nor had he or Yarborough seen any maps, drawings, or anything else that might give them probable cause to arrest him. They had found the stun gun, but had no way of knowing that it had been used the night before on Dennis Avery. They had also found camouflage uniforms and gas masks. But there was nothing illegal about either. At 11:51 A.M., Alvord conferred with Yarborough and both agreed that it was time to call it quits. Alvord would later file a written report about his conversation with Jeffrey.
Lundgren advised that he believes that a judgment day is at hand, but it is at the hand of the Lord and not his, and Lundgren finds no justification in the scriptures for violently taking the temple or killing other individuals.
He advised that he does not consider himself a prophet, but does consider himself a teacher.
Lundgren advised that the camouflage uniforms were for hunting and the stun gun was purchased for his wife for her own personal protection. The gas masks are used for spray painting and refinishing.
Lundgren advised that he does a great deal of hunting and his father was a collector of guns and he has just continued the tradition.
When the officers returned to the Kirtland Police Department, Yarborough told Alvord that they had “blown it.”
“Bob, we didn’t do what we were attempting to do out there today,” Yarborough said. “We wanted to break them up and put the fear of”—he suddenly stopped because he didn’t want to say the word God. He continued—”the fear of law enforcement in them. I’m afraid we actually tightened the cohesiveness of the group.” If anything, Yarborough continued, Jeffrey probably now thought that he was invincible.
Alvord debriefed his agents. All of the suspects had denied that Lundgren was a prophet, except for one. Keith Johnson had been clearly nervous and had told FBI Agent John Powers and Kirtland Police Lieutenant Edward A. Dodaro a bizarre story. Keith said that the group was about to go to the “wilderness” because God was going to appear to Jeffrey on May 3, 1989, and bestow tremendous powers on him. Lundgren would be able to call fire down on his enemies, as well as lightning, and be able to cause earthquakes that would shake the earth and destroy most civilizations. After this was done, the Russians would take over the world and on May 4, 1990, Lundgren would lead an armed assault on the RLDS church in Kirtland, which he would rescue from the Russians. Lundgren would have the “Sword of Laban” when he did this. Keith told the officers that he believed Lundgren could do these things, but if God did not appear to Jeffrey on May 3, 1989, he would leave the group.
Keith’s story was as strange as the ones that Shar and Kevin had told, and because of that both Alvord and Yarborough suspected that some of it was true. But Keith hadn’t said anything that would justify the FBI’s continuing to keep its investigation of Jeffrey going. Alvord knew that he had run out of time.
When Alvord left the police station that afternoon, he told Yarborough that he still wanted to help. Although the FBI’s probe would be officially closed in a few days, he would personally be willing to check out any leads that the chief might develop. Yarborough thanked him.
Back at the farmhouse, everyone gathered in the living room as soon as the agents left. Jeffrey quizzed each person: “What did they ask you? What did you say?” Keith listened to what the others said and quickly realized that he had said too much. When Jeffrey asked him, Keith claimed that he hadn’t told the officers anything. Greg didn’t want to talk out loud. He grabbed a pad and pencil and wrote messages. The FBI, he scribbled on his pad, had bugged the room. Jeffrey doubted it.
Jeffrey turned to Alice. “Now do you have any doubt that I am who I say I am?” he asked.
“Jeffrey considered the fact that the FBI didn’t know about the Averys a direct confirmation of the fact that he could do anything he wanted,” Alice later said, “and do it right under their noses.”
“God has promised me that he will protect my back,” Jeffrey said. “We don’t have to worry. The Lord is with us.”
Just the same, Jeffrey decided that he wanted to leave the farm as soon as he could. But first, he wanted everything in the house that had anything to do with the temple takeover destroyed. The city maps that Richard had stolen were burned in the fireplace. The replica of the temple that Danny had made was smashed and burned too. At one point, Jeffrey had talked about disguising Damon and Danny as paramedics during the temple raid. He had bought them white outfits and Debbie had stolen some paramedic patches from the hospital where she worked. The outfits and patches were tossed into the fire. Jeffrey had bought several old police badges at gun shows and those were dropped into the septic tank. Sharon, meanwhile, stood in the bathroom burning notes that she and others had taken during Jeffrey’s classes. She flushed the ashes down the stool. The group burned so many items that they had to stop and clean out the fireplace. Jeffrey sent Damon into the apple orchard with ashes. “Break them up and spread them out,” he ordered.
By 2:30 P.M., all the evidence about the takeover had been destroyed. The group got back to packing. At 3:00 P.M., Keith went to Tom’s Sunoco Station, which is located next to the police department, to pick up his Sierra, which was having its clutch repaired. Andolsek had seen the distinctive school-bus-yellow truck parked there earlier, and when he spotted Johnson at the station, he called to Yarborough and the two of them hustled over to speak with Keith. They hoped he would feel free to talk now that he was away from the farmhouse. But Keith wouldn’t comment. He was still going to the wilderness, he said. But if he ever left the group, he would contact the police. Back in the station, Yarborough and Andolsek agreed that Keith was the “weak link.” Over time, both felt that he could be turned into
an informer. The only question was whether the officers would get another chance to turn him.
Counting the children, there were twenty-four people making the trip to the wilderness. Debbie had bought over $2,000 worth of food that was spread all over the kitchen floor. There were still things in the barn that had to be sorted. Jeffrey decided that everyone was taking too long. He announced that he and his family, and Susie and her children, were going to leave. The others would load the U-Haul truck and leave as soon as they could. Jeffrey put the bag of pistols and all of the rifles into the Nissan truck that he was driving. He told his children and Alice to get in. Susie would drive the Luffs’ 1978 Plymouth sedan. The others would ride in the U- Haul, Greg’s Honda, and the Johnsons’ Sierra that was going to be used to pull a horse trailer. Jeffrey appointed Greg to be in charge.
“I had no idea where I was going,” Jeffrey said later. “The scriptures just said to drive in a southbound east direction.” He and Greg looked at a map. Jeffrey pointed toward West Virginia. They chose a highway. Jeffrey said that he would stop at a motel at around eleven o’clock. He would stay in one that could be seen from the road. Greg’s group should keep driving until they spotted Jeffrey’s truck. In case they missed each other, Greg and Jeffrey agreed on a place to meet farther down the highway the next morning. Whoever got there first would wait for the others.
At dusk, Jeffrey and his family, and Susie and her children, left the farmhouse. Alice looked back as they drove away. She would later recall that only one FBI agent had asked about the Averys and he had asked only one question about them before switching the subject. The agents had no idea that the bodies of Dennis, Cheryl, Trina, Becky, and Karen had been buried less than twelve hours earlier.
Fifteen minutes after Jeffrey left the farm, he signaled Susie, who was following his truck, to turn in to a Burger King restaurant. The kids were hungry and so was he, but Alice couldn’t eat.