by Pete Earley
Chapter 46
WORD spread quickly through camp about Jeffrey’s ultimatum, and on August 25, Keith told Jeffrey that Kathy had agreed to have sexual intercourse with him in order to save Keith and Dennis. Jeffrey hurried over to talk to Kathy. “He wanted me to know that he wasn’t going to hurt me,” she said. “Jeff said that if I had any fears, or any questions, I should ask. . . . I told him that to be quite frank, my concerns were with Alice and Keith, I wasn’t afraid of Jeffrey at all.”
There weren’t many things that Kathy Johnson was afraid of. At age thirty-six, Kathy had given birth to four sons, raised prize-winning goats, horses, and cattle, run a thirty-acre farm by herself, sold insurance, and done hard physical labor nearly every day of her life. Kathy was considered a “tomboy”—even as an adult. In a dress and nylons, she looked awkward. But in blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a wool shirt, Kathy was radiant. Of all the women in the group, she was the one most suited to the rugged outdoor life. She was strong, smart, and fiercely stubborn. She was also, the group discovered, extremely gullible. At times, Kathy herself would even joke about how she was a naive “Iowa farm girl.”
The oldest of five children, Kathy had grown up near Woodbine, a town of 1,400 just north of Council Bluffs. When she was eleven, her parents decided to convert their four-hundred-acre farm into a dude ranch. Each summer, as many as seventy children would fill the ranch’s bunkhouses. They came to learn how to ride horseback and it was Kathy’s job to teach them. By the time she was in high school, she was an expert rider, experienced rodeo racer, and shrewd horse trader. She was an honor-roll student and an outstanding distance runner on the school track team. When she graduated in 1971, Kathy held school records in three track events.
Kathy had met Keith at Central Missouri State University where she planned to study nursing. She had enrolled at CMSU because her parents were both active RLDS members and they wanted her to attend a school near the center spot. Keith was a senior, she was a freshman, and when they were introduced at the RLDS student union, Kathy was instantly smitten.
Keith was handsome, with jet-black hair and engaging eyes. He was confident, funny, clever. They went out a few times and Kathy was soon deeply in love, but Keith decided to marry someone else. Heartbroken, Kathy left college after her freshman year, returned home, and eventually wed a boy who had worked for her parents at the dude ranch. Three years later, Kathy got a divorce, and Keith, who had got a divorce himself by then, began writing her. They were married on May 7, 1977.
It was Keith who had first introduced Kathy to Jeffrey and Alice. When they met, Kathy felt uncomfortable. She didn’t like Jeffrey’s sexual jokes and Alice seemed mousy. The newlyweds didn’t really see much of the Lundgrens. The Johnsons were too busy. Kathy and Keith had bought a thirty-acre farm not far from Warrensburg. Keith worked as a machinist during the day. Kathy sold insurance and ran the farm. Their social life revolved around the church. After she got pregnant, Kathy quit the insurance business. She had three more sons in quick succession. When the first reached school age, Kathy founded Zion’s Hope Country School. Later, she taught her boys at home rather than expose them to public schools. “Our goal was to seek the Lord,” she recalled. “It was the center of everything that we did.”
Keith worked hard in the church and moved up its ranks. At first glance, the Johnsons seemed to have everything—a good income, a nice home, a loving family, and status in their church and community.
But in 1983, Keith was laid off from his job and was unemployed for eighteen months. He and Kathy were forced to sell their farm and move into a house owned by Keith’s relatives. They went into debt and their financial stress took a toll on their personal relationship, they both later said. Still, they stuck it out. It was during this same time that the RLDS decided to ordain women. At the RLDS worldwide conference in 1984 and later in 1986, Keith introduced numerous ill-fated motions aimed at preventing women from serving as priests. He soon found his fundamentalist viewpoint unwelcome among the church hierarchy.
Like most others in Jeffrey’s group, Keith and Kathy had sought out Jeffrey and his teachings as an alternative to the liberalization of their church. It didn’t take much prodding to convince both of them that the RLDS was being led by a fallen prophet. Their decision to join Jeffrey’s group was supposed to be a rebirth for the Johnsons. They saw it as a chance to start over.
On the day that Kathy reported to Jeffrey’s tent to be “pierced,” Alice went for a walk away from camp. Keith read his scriptures. “I told Kathy to do whatever she had to do to keep us from being killed,” Keith said later. Kathy found Jeffrey eagerly waiting in his tent.
“All it was supposed to be was intercession,” Kathy said later, “but what actually transpired was something of a whole lot bigger magnitude. We both sensed that this was an incredible experience.”
During intercourse, Jeffrey announced that he loved her.
Afterward, he told Kathy that he had always felt a “tenderness” toward her. He wasn’t certain why, but he had felt it from the time that they first met. He was going to check the scriptures to see why she was different from other women.
Kathy had no way of knowing that Jeffrey was using exactly the same lines on her that he had used on Tonya four months earlier.
“I wasn’t sure what was happening,” Kathy recalled. The “God of the whole earth” had told her that she was special and she believed him. She had become convinced that Jeffrey was a prophet.
That night, Alice attempted to reclaim her turf. Greg, Sharon, and Debbie all had good voices and Alice asked them to sing several love songs to Jeffrey. “They were supposed to be from Alice to Jeffrey,” Kathy recalled, “but I was sitting right across the picnic table from Jeff and he was staring at me and I knew he was thinking of me.”
Worse, so did Alice.
The next morning, Jeffrey stopped by Kathy’s tent while Keith was out hunting.
“I have a problem,” he said.
“Oh,” Kathy replied.
“You ruined me. I don’t want anyone else sexually but you. All I can see and feel is you.”
Kathy later recalled her feelings that morning. “Maybe I never lost the Iowa farm girl in me,” she said, “but I was in love. I was totally in love with this man.”
“How do we deal with all this?” Kathy asked Jeffrey.
“I’ll look in the scriptures,” he said. “I’ll find a way.”
That night, Alice once again tried to please Jeffrey. This time, she told the group that she was going to dance for him. “She had a dress on and heels and hose and she climbed up on one of the picnic tables and began to dance seductively,” Debbie remembered. “She didn’t strip and she didn’t have any rhythm and Jeffrey ended up just getting really disgusted and pissed off because he didn’t want his wife doing that in front of the other men. He said, ‘What the hell are you doing this for?,’ and that was the beginning of a world war because Alice had this big erotic thing planned and she had looked totally ridiculous.”
Everyone in camp could hear Alice screaming that night at Jeffrey. The next morning, Alice stayed in her tent until noon and then she suddenly emerged and raced over to where the women were doing laundry.
“I hope all of you are happy,’’ she said sarcastically. “Because of you and your stupid intercession, I haven’t had a good fuck all week.”
She then glared at Kathy and marched back into her tent.
Jeffrey had decided even before the intercession dances that he no longer wanted Tonya Patrick as his wife, and once he decided to seduce Kathy, he moved quickly to get rid of Tonya.
One morning shortly after the dances he abruptly announced that he was sending her back to Dennis. “He didn’t want a sinful woman like me in his tent, he said.” Jeffrey told Dennis that he was no longer in danger of being destroyed because he had reformed and because of Kathy’s intercession. Tonya and Molly were moving back into his tent.
“Is she coming back as my wife?” Denni
s asked, rather startled.
“Yes,” Jeffrey said. “She is your wife, not mine.”
That night at class, Jeffrey told the group that he had searched the scriptures and learned that Tonya was not really flesh of his flesh. Rather, she had been his “captive wife.” Under the law of Moses, Jeffrey explained, a lord was allowed to take as many wives from his enemy as he wished. Tonya had been “captured” from Dennis in May because Dennis had been sinful. But now that Dennis had reformed, he was no longer an enemy and Tonya was being “restored” to him. Tonya felt foolish. “I thought to myself, ‘What am I, the wife-of-the-month?”’ But she didn’t question Jeffrey and neither did anyone else. “All of us were playing roles by that point,” Tonya later explained. “Jeffrey had become so crazy that we all just simply acted like we were supposed to. You couldn’t tell who really believed in him and who was afraid.”
Tonya had decided that Jeffrey was a “sham,” but when she reported to Dennis’s tent, she didn’t share her feelings with him. She was afraid that he would report her to Jeffrey. Over time, the group had become so paranoid that they were all suspicious of the others.
Tonya’s sudden return worried the other men. Most realized that Jeffrey could do the same thing to them that he had done to Dennis—simply accuse them of being sinful and claim their spouse as a “captive wife.”
“After the dances, everything got real strange, real fast,” Debbie recalled.
Jeffrey was beginning to make bolder and bolder statements about his divinity and powers and he seemed fixated on sex. One night after a scripture class, Jeffrey told Greg that they needed to talk in private. After swearing Greg to secrecy, Jeffrey explained that he had been studying First Samuel, chapter 18, which described how King Saul’s son, Jonathan, had loved David. Jeffrey told Greg that when the chapter was divided by the pattern, the verses revealed that David and Jonathan were homosexual lovers. Although he wasn’t certain, Jeffrey said the verses seemed to suggest that he and Greg were destined to become homosexual lovers as well.
Greg was so alarmed that he told Debbie that same night what Jeffrey had said. “Greg was not interested in Jeffrey at all,” she recalled, “and he was worried about what Jeffrey might demand. It was like no one was safe from Jeffrey’s sexual fantasies.”
Debbie noticed that Jeffrey was making more pointed sexual remarks around her too. She was worried that she was next on his “conquest list.” She wasn’t alone.
Ron began to pick up hints that Jeffrey was on the prowl. It seemed to him that Jeffrey was picking on Susie, criticizing her in an attempt to drive a wedge between them in a thinly veiled attempt to free Susie for his advances.
Richard also began to wonder about Jeffrey’s sexual obsessions. Before the group left the farm in Kirtland, Richard had found hidden in the barn a dildo and a magazine that contained explicit photographs of homosexual acts. He was certain that both belonged to Jeffrey.
After the intercession dances, Jeffrey began talking about sex more openly in his scriptural classes at night. During one such session, Jeffrey announced that the Old Testament prophet Isaiah was a “cross dresser” who frequently wore women’s clothing. Another night, Jeffrey claimed that the pattern had revealed to him that Jesus Christ had engaged in sex with various women and had even masturbated as a boy. But the strangest sexual interpretation came when Jeffrey interpreted verse 16 in Isaiah, chapter 3, which described the haughty “daughters of Zion.” Jeffrey said that Isaiah had wanted to humble the “daughters of Zion” because they were filled with pride. Verses 17 through 24, Jeffrey said, told how Isaiah had examined the women’s “secret parts” and made them “stink” instead of smelling “sweet.” Because Jeffrey didn’t go into detail, no one in the group was certain what he had meant, but Alice understood. Jeffrey was talking about smearing feces on women.
About ten days after Jeffrey and Kathy engaged in sex, Jeffrey announced that the two of them needed to go on a short trip together. During the summer, Jeffrey had sold the group’s horse trailer to raise money for supplies. He had moved the horses from the camp, where they were having trouble living in the open, to a stable about thirty miles away. The stable owner was supposed to sell the animals, but instead he had been renting them to tourists for rides. Jeffrey had decided to retrieve the horses, and he said that Kathy was the only member of the group who was in good enough physical shape and smart enough about horses to help him walk the animals back to camp.
They began their trek through the mountains on September 5. Both later claimed that they got lost and had no choice but to spend the night together in the woods. It was during that night that Jeffrey told Kathy what he had found out about them in the scriptures. Just as he had done with Tonya, Jeffrey told her that she was his Bathsheba and that she was his missing “second rib.”
“Does that mean that I am not flesh of Keith’s flesh?” Kathy asked innocently.
“Yes, you are flesh of my flesh,” he replied. “God made you from me exclusively for me.”
“I didn’t expect him to say that,” Kathy later recalled.
Jeffrey told Kathy that he wanted her to move into his tent, but she said she needed time to think about it.
When Jeffrey and Kathy didn’t return to camp that night, Alice became suspicious. The next morning, she sent Greg and Richard to look for them. They found Jeffrey and Kathy a few miles from camp. Jeffrey said one of the horses had become lame, but Greg and Richard didn’t see anything wrong with it. Alice was furious.
The next day, Kathy signaled Jeffrey from the woods. She was willing to leave her husband and four children to become his wife, she said. “It really didn’t make any sense for me to deny the truth,” she later explained. “If I was flesh of Jeff’s flesh, then I wasn’t doing Keith any favors by living with him in sin.”
Now that Kathy had made her commitment, she wanted to know when Jeffrey intended to tell Keith and Alice. Jeffrey wasn’t certain, but he assured Kathy that he would find a way.
On September 15, Sheriff Hank Thompson swooped over the camp in a helicopter. Everyone ducked for cover. Thompson buzzed the camp again, but didn’t land. He was checking to see how the group would react. As soon as the helicopter was gone, Jeffrey rushed over to Alice. Jeffrey announced that it was getting too dangerous for Alice and the children to stay in the camp. The police might arrive any minute and arrest everyone for the murder of the Averys. The group was also running low on cash and the weather was becoming frigid. Obviously, Jeffrey and his band were not going to be able to spend the winter camping in the hollow. Jeffrey told Alice that he wanted her to leave that very day for her mother’s house in Macks Creek. He would join her later and they would find somewhere new for the group to live. He told her to take Jason, Kristen, and Caleb with her. Jeffrey also wanted Susie Luff and her two children to go. Alice agreed.
Jeffrey helped Alice pack the truck and then suggested that she take a nap so she wouldn’t be tired when she made the thirteen- hour drive. After Alice retired into the tent, Jeffrey wandered over to Kathy’s tent. It had been more than a week since she had agreed to be his wife and Kathy was irritated that Jeffrey hadn’t told the group that she was flesh of the “God of the whole earth.” Jeffrey knew that he’d be rid of Alice by nightfall, but he figured that he could slip into town with Kathy and be back before Alice woke up. A few hours later, when Alice came out of her tent, she asked Ron where Jeffrey had gone. Ron said Jeffrey was in town cashing a check and making some telephone calls.
“Don’t you think two and a half hours is a long time to make phone calls?” Alice asked. “Did anyone go with him?”
Ron tried to dodge the question, but Alice pressed him. “Kathy Johnson went with him,” Ron finally said. Alice turned around and stomped into her tent.
“I knew that Jeffrey had taken her into town to some motel so he could fuck her,” she said later.
A few minutes later, Alice heard the ATV coming through the woods. Jeffrey slowed down and Kathy jumped off the ba
ck of the vehicle as soon as they got near the camp. Kathy ducked into her tent and Jeffrey continued into the compound. As soon as he stepped off the ATV, Alice attacked. She slapped Jeffrey across the face.
“You son of a bitch!” she screamed.
All the adults, except Kathy, watched as Alice slapped Jeffrey again and again.
“Here is your almighty God,” she yelled. “You can have him!”
With that, Alice marched into her tent. Jeffrey ran after her. “Don’t say anything to me, Jeffrey!” Alice hollered. “You’ve gone too far this time! You’re a lying son of a bitch.” Within seconds, Jeffrey came backing out of the tent. Alice was hitting him again.
“I came unglued,” Alice later recalled. “I totally lost it. I hit him. I slapped him. I kicked him. I pulled his hair. I did everything I could do to hurt him.”
When she finally stopped and returned to her tent, Jeffrey looked at the group. He was beaming. “It was a big thing to Jeffrey,” Dennis said, “because he wanted everyone to see that she had attacked him and he had taken all of her blows without fighting back or hitting her.”
Several minutes later, Alice emerged from the tent and yelled to her children that it was time to leave. They scrambled into the truck and Susie hustled her son and daughter into the vehicle too. Jeffrey walked up to the window. Alice was still fuming.
“When you move that whore into the tent tonight, have her bring her own pillow,” Alice said. “I’m taking mine.”
Jeffrey had tears in his eyes.
“You’re wrong about Kathy and me,” she later remembered Jeffrey telling her. “Alice, you’re the only woman I will ever love.” As soon as Alice was gone, Jeffrey hurried over to talk to Kathy. He intended to announce that night in scripture class, he said, that she was his second wife.
Chapter 47
WHEN the operator asked if Donna Keehler would accept a collect telephone call from Jeffrey Lundgren, she immediately shouted, “Yes!” As soon as they were connected, Donna quizzed her son-in- law. “Where are you?”