Unholy Sacrifice

by Robert Scott

  Dawn claimed that her relationship changed with her son after Harmony and talking with Taylor. She said, “I saw him (her son) not as a child, but as a person in a small body. I learned to communicate with him. I gave him the emotional support I never gave him before.”

  By this time, Taylor was “totally charismatic and dynamic” to Dawn. She recalled, “I came to believe that he was a prophet of God. A seer and a revelator. He communicated directly with God and disseminated revelations from God. I thought of the stories listed in the Bible. I thought of Moses, the head of the Israelites. He guided them. The way Taylor guided me.

  “A prophet of God is ordained by God. Any individual can receive revelations, but a prophet is raised up by God. Taylor had the insights into the dynamics between people. Everything he said would be true.”

  As an example, Taylor would talk about the dynamics between two people. Dawn recalled, “I would talk to them and everything Taylor said about them would be true. He had an impressive command of scripture. There was a huge sense of peace being around him. A power from what he was saying. A sense of joy. I understood it to be the spirit of God.

  “I’d never met anyone like him before. He wouldn’t stumble over words. He could reference scripture to news events. He made you see the impact of a person in the world.

  “Taylor could do all of this with Keri and with Justin. Taylor would talk about how Justin needed to do certain things. He’d give him instructions on what scriptures to read. Ways for him to live his life aligned with the Spirit.”

  Of Taylor’s gift for prophecy, Dawn said later, “I believed it all without a shadow of a doubt. I believed as much that Taylor was a prophet as I believed that Jesus was God’s son. At one point, Justin and I had a discussion about whether Taylor was a prophet. I prayed about it and realized that he was a prophet and that I should follow him.”

  Dawn also believed that God’s law was higher than man’s law. And Taylor told her that Satan had been a useful tool in the world. He said that if not for Satan, Adam and Eve would have never had sex, and the world would have remained unpopulated. Satan had played an important role in the development of the world.

  As time went on, Justin also became more talkative with Dawn. He told her about his life in the Mormon Church and about other religions he was reading about as well. He was particularly intrigued by Buddhism and their thoughts on Reincarnation, as well as certain dietary regimens. She could already see that he was eating foods that were healthy and that he enjoyed it. He didn’t have a yen for junk food.

  At her place in Martinez, Dawn got to know the Helzer brothers a lot better, especially Taylor. She said, “He spent every minute of every day talking to me. He even dropped by work to talk to me. He was like my best friend. I knew he lived with Keri on Oak Grove for a while; then they moved into a condo in Martinez. I didn’t know her very well.”

  By this time, Dawn also had interactions with Justin. She said, “Sometimes I would go shopping with him. I cooked for him once a week. He definitely enjoyed his food. He didn’t talk while he ate. He was just too much into his food. After dinner we’d talk about a whole range of things. We’d also spend a lot of time praying. We’d pray about our goals and our daily life. We’d pray that God would guide us.”

  For the most part, however, Dawn talked and prayed with Taylor. He began telling her about something called Transform America. She recalled, “He talked about how bright people could have a lot of joy. They could live consciously. He wanted to transform America and the world.

  “Taylor said he would pick a small town somewhere and tell the city council that a Transform America group in their town would boost tax revenues. People would be happier and make more money. He would send the mayor and councilmen, along with their families, to the group for free. When they went through it, they’d be happy and encourage other townspeople and their constituents to go.”

  By this means, Taylor hoped that a community would donate one percent of tax revenue to his nonprofit organization. He would go from town to town, setting up local chapters of Transform America. Bit by bit, the whole nation would see the benefits such a group brought.

  Taylor waxed poetic on his plans. Dawn said later, “Transform America would bring on the perennial reign of Christ. It was a way to shift consciousness in the world. Peace and joy would replace chaos and war.”

  There was only one problem, as far as Taylor was concerned, he needed money, and lots of it, to start Transform America. He told Dawn, “I’ll need at least a million dollars just to get it going.” He led her to believe that there was already an organization called Transform America in place, but that it was secret, and that she shouldn’t mention the name to others. So Dawn never shared what Taylor was telling her at that time with other people.

  By this point, Keri Furman had just about had it with Transform America and Taylor. She said, “There were meetings when I had to leave the room so he could talk to Justin or Dawn in private. He (Taylor) told me, ‘Go to your room!’”

  Finally Keri had enough of Taylor and his demands and secretive ways. She packed up her belongings and headed for southern California, to be in touch with the Playboy organization there and pursue her modeling career.

  Dawn, however, was falling more and more under Taylor’s spell. She was working for the Bay Alarm Company at the time, and she told her supervisor, Yolanda Dobbins, “I’m being inspired for a job more in line with what I’m called to do. Me and my friends are going to make a lot of money.”

  By now, Taylor was not only giving her visions of Transform America, but his plans for In To Me See as well. Of this plan, Dawn said, “It would be a safe place for wealthy businessmen. Safe from reporters. Since CEOs are too well-known for that kind of place, there would be privacy.”

  One of the prerequisites before a girl was allowed to become part of In To Me See was a questionnaire that Taylor began to devise. Dawn helped him type it up and even added suggestions. She said later, “He’d ask me about how a question should be phrased; then I’d help. But he came up with the ideas.”

  Taylor wanted only women who lived up to his principles, and, in essence, “got it,” as far as he was concerned.

  Dawn said, “If the girls wanted to have sex for money, that was okay. It would totally be up to them. Then the money they made, Taylor could invest it for them. He was good at that. It would encourage them to join. As he said, ‘You need money to make money.’”

  Taylor even floated a bizarre idea by Dawn that concerned fast-food restaurant chains. It would be a scam. They would shoot out windows in various locations to make sure the stock would drop. Then supposedly he would buy into the stock at a low point, and trade it when it rebounded after the shootings stopped. He hoped to make a lot of money this way. This plan never got off the ground.

  Mainly, Taylor concentrated on the questionnaires for In To Me See. The questionnaires’ thrust was to see whether a girl had a high sense of right and wrong, or was ambivalent on the subject. Taylor planned to hand out the questionnaires to young women at raves while he sold ecstasy. There is some evidence that he actually did this on one occasion.

  Dawn, Justin and Taylor all went to a private rave in San Francisco on New Year’s Eve. Of course, there was all the talk at the time of possible Y2K disasters, but nothing of that sort happened.

  It’s surprising that as suspicious and paranoid as Taylor was, he showed the questionnaire to some people besides Dawn. One of these was Christina Kelly.

  Kelly recalled some of the questions on it. She remembered:

  Sex before marriage is wrong? T F

  I am a powerful sexual person? T F

  I am a religious person? T F

  I don’t do drugs? T F

  Lying is wrong? T F

  Stealing is wrong? T F

  If Taylor was preaching, educating and proselytizing for Impact America and other schemes, Justin was looking inward. He kept a journal of his thoughts and aspirations. In one section, he wrote of
creating a world that he desired. He said that his own advice would be his greatest source of wisdom. Then he listed his top three goals for the year:

  1. Driver?

  2. A sexual lover.

  3. Become a druid.

  Farther down the list were his hopes to get a degree or a good career.

  Justin went into more detail about becoming a good sexual lover. He said that he wanted to express trust, self-expression and passion.

  Of becoming a druid, he said that they were possessed with confidence, peace, pleasure and heroism. He admired the game Dungeons & Dragons. According to a cousin, he and Taylor once played the game for twenty-five hours without a break.

  In another journal, Justin listed more goals:

  1. A degree.

  2. Self-awareness.

  3. Earn $45,000 a year.

  4. Physical strength.

  5. Be out of debt.

  6. Get a new car that was silver and black.

  7. Harmony.

  8. Detachment.

  In a later section, he wasn’t expressing his love for Druidism anymore, but rather an admiration for the teachings of spiritual leader Deepak Chopra. Justin spoke of “love portending,” pure consciousness and a field of infinite creativity. Justin proclaimed under this new regime he could accept the present moment as a gift.

  Throughout Justin’s writings, the urge for detachment kept popping up in his texts. He wanted to detach himself from worldly things. He spoke of detaching himself from “the drama of everyday life.” He tried to simplify his already austere world. He wrote of releasing ego, finding courage and finding a relationship with a woman of mutual attraction.

  As far as sanctuary went, he said, “I imagine it into existence.”

  Some of his thoughts were fairly esoteric. He wrote of releasing pure light into the universe and translating food into pure energy. He obsessed about creating the perfect body for himself. He took his meditation and exercises to extremes.

  Justin kept coming back to one sad and lonely fact, however. He had no girlfriend and despaired of ever finding one. He wrote hopefully of sending and receiving eye contact with a beautiful woman. He yearned for what his brother had in the realm of women. Once again, he wanted to be like his charismatic brother, Taylor.

  There was a darker side to Justin’s journals as well. He wrote of embracing pain and death. He said that Spirit saw the value of pain and death. These things were not to be dreaded. He saw life and death as complementing each other.

  Despite still being married to Ann, despite his relationships with Keri and Dawn, Taylor found time to be around and influence other young women. One of these women was named Robin Stewart. She met Taylor at a birthday party and recalled, “We got involved very quickly. He was very positive all the time. What was so attractive about him was that he was so positive and achievement-oriented. He had an attitude like, ‘I am wonderful. Life is wonderful.’ He was very, very outgoing. He said he could do anything he set his mind to.”

  After awhile, however, Stewart began to see some of Taylor’s dark side. She said, “None of his behavior ever mortified him. I was very antidrug, but he was experimenting with things that were taboo. He was into pornography and trying sexual things out of the mainstream. I wasn’t comfortable with that. He wanted to experience all of life’s experiences and not be afraid of pain. He wanted to eliminate fear. He thought you could grow from experiencing pain.”

  The last straw for Stewart was a rafting trip. She remembered, “It was early summer. The river was very high. The rest of his family didn’t want to do it. But Taylor was all for it. He guided us on the raft down the river. Afterward, he told us he’d been partying all night. We had our lives in his hands. It was very upsetting for me.”

  Another young woman, Elaine Totten, spoke of Taylor in the same manner as Stewart. She said, “He was charming, exciting and full of life.” But she also spoke disparagingly of a rafting trip with Taylor. “He was not good at following through. He was always late. I was the one who had to rent the trailer for the raft. He had a boat and no transportation.”

  Totten, who was Mormon, was also disturbed by Taylor’s new philosophies. She said, “He showed me how reincarnation could be supported in the Book of Mormon. He said the Latter-Day Saints had gone down the wrong path after Joseph Smith. He believed all the later presidents of the church were misguided.

  “Taylor’s whole countenance was no longer radiant. He told me he had communicated with animals. One time he communicated with a fly. He said to the fly, ‘If you land on my food, I’ll have to kill you.’ He said the fly communicated back to him, ‘I won’t,’ then flew away.”

  Debra McClanahan also knew Taylor, Justin and Dawn. McClanahan lived in an apartment on Ryan Road in Concord and in 1998 had met Dawn at the LDS church in Danville. Justin and Dawn showed up one time in costumes at her apartment. They were going to a Goth club. Both Dawn and Justin were dressed all in black, and Justin wore knee-high boots. This was the first time Debra met Justin. She recalled later, “He was quiet and shy. Dawn did all the talking.”

  Debra was in no way shocked by Dawn and Justin’s attire. In fact, she dressed flamboyantly with long, flowing dresses or skirts and an almost gypsylike appearance. Debra considered herself to be a witch who practiced white magic—in other words, a good witch, or “white witch.” She claimed never to have cast evil spells or dabbled in black magic. She took Wicca very seriously and attended meetings.

  On a later occasion, Dawn took care of Debra’s daughter so she could go out to dances. Dawn eventually introduced Taylor to Debra. Debra said later, “He was charming. He was very nice. It was around Christmastime and he wished me a merry Christmas.”

  Like Keri Furman, Kelly Lord and Dawn Godman, Debra McClanahan was drawn to Taylor Helzer. Eventually she and Taylor had an affair. Taylor and Debra had been out all night at a rave when he dropped her off at her apartment around five in the morning. Instead of leaving, he got into bed with her and they had sex.

  Debra also gave Taylor full-body massages. She believed that massages released energy and were almost spiritual. Debra met Taylor’s mom, Carma, who was a massage therapist. They discussed the importance of a good massage. In time Debra gave massages to Justin as well.

  Debra was very frank about her sexuality and those around her. She said that when she gave a massage to Taylor or Justin, and they had an erection, she would stimulate them until they ejaculated.

  Debra also admitted that she gave Dawn a sexual massage as well. In fact, she related that one night in Concord she and Dawn were at a place called Catfish Charlie’s Bar when they hooked up with another person. Debra did not specify if this was a man or a woman. They all went back to Debra’s place and had a ménage à trois.

  Christina Kelly knew Taylor, Dawn and Justin. She went to raves with Dawn and Taylor and knew that Taylor was making money by selling ecstasy at raves. He eventually told her about In To Me See, but she was under the impression it wouldn’t be sexual in nature. She thought it was just for rich men who needed escorts to some function. She said about Taylor, “He could light up a room.”

  Of Justin, Kelly said, “He was gentle and loving. Not a person who attracted attention.”

  Then she spoke of one of Justin’s strange habits. She noticed that when Justin stayed over his parents’ house, he slept in a closet space beneath the stairs. There was a mattress there on the floor. She said, “He was like a little kid. He loved it there.”

  It was not yet certain who Taylor’s third-core person would be for his future plans. He always had his eye on various impressionable young women. One of them was Lina Richardson.

  Lina was a very pretty blonde who fell under Taylor’s spell. She later said, about him, “Taylor was the sun. He was one of the most intense, charismatic people I ever met. I still can’t comprehend his personality, totally.

  “When I was around Taylor, he occupied my every sense. He was overwhelming. We were at a tire store once. He spoke
to everyone there. Before long, everyone was smiling. They were drawn to him. He had a gift.”

  One day Taylor visited with Lina at her parents’ home. He was so bold as to ask her parents about their sexual habits. Nothing was off-limits for Taylor. As far as Lina’s sexual habits went, she told him that she was a virgin. For some reason, known only to himself, Taylor passed this information on to Justin.

  One day out of the blue, Lina got a phone call from Justin, whom she barely knew of and had never met in person. He told her that he was amazed that she was still a virgin and he thought it was great. Lina was absolutely stunned that Taylor had passed this information on to his brother. She told Justin, “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

  This did not deter Justin. He went on and on about how great he thought it was that she was a virgin. At a loss for words, Lina told him, “Thank you.” And thought to herself, Why the hell are you calling me about this?

  At the end of the conversation with Justin, Lina said, “Can I please talk to Taylor?”

  She jumped on Taylor about the situation, but he wasn’t shocked at all and couldn’t understand why she was upset.

  In time, however, Lina learned to like and admire Justin. She recalled, “There was an innocence about Justin. He was one of the gentlest people I ever met. His presence was so small compared to Taylor’s.

  “Justin was very quiet and extremely focused on small everyday things. One time Taylor and I stopped by Gerry’s house. There was a place underneath the staircase for when Justin was there. He slept there in a sleeping bag. He was very happy with the small things. He talked on and on about new juices he had found.

  “Justin admired Taylor in everything he did. His brother was God. Justin was the quintessential younger brother.”