by Robert Scott
On one occasion Taylor left Lina with Justin alone in the house. She felt awkward at first, but then Justin made her relax by building a fire. Lina recalled, “I was in a very awkward situation. Yet Justin made me feel comfortable. I had never seen anyone build a fire so slowly or carefully. He brushed all the soot out and brushed the ashes onto a paper. He was slow and meticulous. Then he very carefully built the fire.”
After the episode with the fire, Justin asked Lina to go with him to a Goth club. She went along, but the Goth scene was not for her. She said, “Goth clubs were all about death and depression.”
The Goth scene certainly fit Justin’s view of life, but not Taylor’s exuberant manner. Lina said of Justin, “Compared to Taylor, Justin was a shadow.”
Lina spoke of Taylor’s presence being so overpowering that often she felt ill after having been around him. According to Lina, Taylor wanted to marry her, even though he was still married to Ann. Lina said, “I couldn’t understand his vision. It just seemed wrong. I told him the road he was on wasn’t the right one.”
Lina wanted to know who was in the inner circle he kept talking about. He wouldn’t tell her.
One time near the end of their relationship, she told him, “Your energy is dark. It’s evil.”
After hearing this, according to Lina, Taylor cried. She was obviously not going to be a part of his scheme.
There were always more women in Taylor’s life, however. One of these was Jessyka Chompff. She had met Taylor through her boyfriend, Alex. They went together on a trip with Taylor and really hit it off with him.
They hit it off so dramatically, in fact, that Jessyka would confess years later that on her wedding night to Alex, her new husband gave Taylor to her as a wedding present. They all climbed into bed and had sex. Then Alex left Taylor alone with Jessyka so she could enjoy him. According to Jessyka, however, Taylor was impotent, so they just “messed around and did other things.”
Strangely enough, Justin did not want to be left out of the mix, as far as Jessyka was concerned. He expressed his love for her. She kissed him a few times on the lips, but that was it. He was so enraptured with her that he wanted to live with her, but things never developed that way.
Dawn Godman’s friend Dawn Kirkland interacted with Justin, rather than Taylor. She had been a member of the LDS Church since 1992. She said later that she often prayed for “comfort, and I’d receive a feeling of peace and love.” She had dinner at one point with the whole Helzer family at their home and went rafting with them as well. This was when Taylor was living with Ann and out of the picture a bit more. She called Gerry, “Brother Gerry.”
She said of Justin, “He was friendly and funny. He cracked jokes all the time.” She really liked Justin, but only as a friend, as so many other women did.
As time went on, Taylor began to trust Dawn Godman and Justin with his ideas, the way he never had with Keri. He began to tell them more and more about his plans for Transform America. Dawn remembered that up until the year 2000, she thought that a prototype of Transform America already existed. It wasn’t until early 2000 that she realized that Transform America did not yet exist. All of it was still only a daydream of Taylor’s.
She said later, “He expressed that Transform America had to start soon because by the time it spread, the world would be close to Christ’s return to earth. It was already the Last Days. Prophecies from the Bible were coming true.
“One time in the car, he told me, ‘Spirit tells me it’s time you got to know everything.’”
They drove up into the Oakland hills and parked at the LDS temple there. Then they got out and sat on the temple grounds. Taylor told her, “This is such a sacred mission, I want the angels to protect us from Satan and his minions. They can’t overhear us here.”
Then he proceeded to tell her everything about his plans for Transform America. She said later, “I thought what a great opportunity and blessing to be able to be a part of this mission. Taylor said that he needed a core group of three to become a full-fledged prophet of God. He already had Justin. He needed me.
“It was the first time up on the temple grounds that I knew people would have to be killed to implement Transform America. There was no set number. I believed he had a direct commandment from God to do this. Everything he said came directly from God. I never felt that he was wrong in planning kidnapping and murder. And neither did Justin.
“We felt we were in the company of angels. A sense of being protected. A sense of security like I never felt before. It was as if someone was standing over you. As if you were a child and a person held you in his arms.
“Killing was acceptable to God on certain occasions. There was the story of Solomon and [King] Agog in the Bible.”
These stories alluded to the fact that evildoers could be killed to help a nation, especially if a nation was suffering from tyranny.
“Then there’s the story of Nephi in the Book of Mormon.”
This story referred to a man who was instructed by God to kill a man who abused his power in keeping the Golden Tablets in which the history of the Nephites was written.
“Transform America was a way to bring harmony to the world. It would bring in Christ’s millennial reign of peace.”
Now all Taylor needed was a fitting person to be sacrificed for his grandiose plans. Someone who would give her life, whether she knew it or not, for his grand scheme. In the end, he chose a young woman who had ties to one of America’s living legends of blues. Her name was Selina Bishop and her father was blues legend Elvin Bishop.
CHAPTER 4
Fooled Around and Fell in Love
Elvin Bishop started playing blues guitar as a college student in Chicago in the early 1960s. He said later that he was influenced by the likes of Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and other blues musicians who had traveled up to the Windy City from the Deep South. Bishop joined with singer Paul Butterfield, guitarist Mike Bloomfield and keyboardist Mark Naftalin to form the highly successful Butterfield Blues Band.
One music critic said of Elvin’s playing style, “He doesn’t just pick and strum, he wrestles with his guitar, strangling the fret board and shaking the whole instrument to pop out every last drop of music.”
Bishop eventually went off on his own, but he kept his style of blues, and he sometimes intermixed it with country-and-western elements. He had talent and drive, and one day in California a girl named Jennifer went to one of his shows.
Jennifer Villarin grew up in Salinas, California, as part of a large family. Jenny’s big brother was David, who said later that he always stood up for her. “She wasn’t a fighter. She was a whiner and a crier when she was little, but I stood up for her,” he laughingly recalled.
The family was so expansive and helpful that they took in Robert Asuncion when he was a very small boy. He said of Jenny, “She was sweet and pretty. Somebody I could brag about. I was always close to her. Whenever I’d go away and come back home, it was like I’d never left. She was very loving.”
Sister Lydia said, “Jenny was a big mouth as a kid. But we all loved her.”
Sister Olga recalled, “Jenny would brush our hair every morning. We gave her a hard time, but we loved her.”
Olga recalled the first time that she and Jenny went to see Elvin Bishop play. She said, “We went to see Elvin as he played onstage at the Stanford Amphitheater. It was amazing. Jenny had a fake ID and went back to see Elvin after the show.”
In this case, it may have been love at first sight. Before long, Elvin would write his most famous song, “Fooled Around and Fell in Love.” The song was about Jenny.
Elvin was very protective of Jenny Villarin. He realized that there were problems in the family when Olga’s father (Jenny’s stepfather) abused Jenny. According to Olga, her father molested Jenny. Olga said, “Elvin rescued her. He took her out of there on her eighteenth birthday. He saved her from a bad environment.
“We were all happy after we left home. Jenny always tried to protect us.
Jenny’s first years with Elvin were happy ones. But she was just too young when Selina was born.”
Selina Bishop was born on October 17, 1977. Olga said, “We called Selina our ‘Little Bean.’ She was just like a little kidney bean. She was so cute. She was the one I cottoned to. Selina had such a soft little voice, but she was so sweet.”
The Bishop household was not an ordinary one. Elvin and Jenny lived the life of a rock musician. Jenny’s niece Jill recalled, “We used to live in Capitola near Santa Cruz. And it wasn’t unusual for Elvin and Jenny to show up at two or three in the morning after a show. They’d sit up and talk for hours.”
David Villarin said that he traveled with Elvin’s band a few times. He recalled, “Elvin led a musician’s life. Most of the time he wouldn’t get out of bed until three in the afternoon.”
It was exciting and romantic for Jenny, but also tiring. She had a young daughter to take care of. Jenny said to niece Jill, “You’re my pumpkin. I love you so much. I have this new little sweet pea. But you will always be my pumpkin.”
Olga said of Selina as a child, “She was very quiet. She had a tiny, high-pitched voice. You had to listen hard to understand her.”
In fact, Selina’s voice was so soft, David could often not understand her. He once asked Jenny, “What language is she speaking?”
It was English, though it was very soft English.
David said of Selina, “She was the bright spot of Jenny’s life.”
Olga agreed. “You can’t describe that closeness. Selina was everything to her. Selina was so loving. She’d climb up into your lap to get lots of hugs. She’d try to make you happy if you were sad.”
Despite Jenny’s love for the child she had by Elvin Bishop, their relationship became more and more difficult as time went on. Finally it ruptured when Selina was three years old, and Elvin and Jenny went their separate ways. Selina, however, retained a love for both parents, and stayed with each of them on different occasions.
Olga said that Selina loved music. “She loved everything from rap to Elvin’s music. But she had her own funny ideas about music. She tried playing drums. But she had her own style. That was Selina.”
After the split with Elvin Bishop, Jenny and Selina moved around a lot. Their county of choice, however, was Marin County, just north of San Francisco. They both loved the woods and the nearby ocean. They stayed with various friends, and even spent a period of time in a small motor home, basically camped out in the woods. Luckily for them, Marin County was a very laid-back place where things like that were not uncommon.
One place that Selina loved while growing up was a café down the road called the Two Bird Café. Beginning at five years old, she would stop there in the morning, every day before catching the school bus, and get a cup of chocolate. The owner, Tony Micelli, thought she was very sweet and polite.
Jenny made ends meet by working at cleaning houses and taking care of young children. She also developed a keen sense of making quality jewelry that used precious and semiprecious stones. This brought her into direct contact with a man named James Gamble. Over time, James would become a very good friend of hers.
James Gamble was born on April 11, 1946, in Daly City, just south of San Francisco. Jim had a younger brother, Larry, and his father and mother divorced when Jim was nine years old. His mother, Frances, recalled, “Jim was five years older than his brother. He was the leader. It was fun raising two boys.”
In his teenage years, Frances said, “Jim was a straight-A student until he found out that being an A student wasn’t considered macho. Then his grades went downhill. Jim thought he was a big shot. He wanted to be good at everything. He was a catcher in baseball and played football in high school. He liked swimming. But he also got a drinking problem early on. He would sneak drinks. He even got in a [car] wreck when he was under the influence of alcohol.”
Perhaps to straighten up and fly right, Jim joined the U.S. Air Force in 1963. He attended basic training in Texas, and was then stationed to a field in Illinois. Jim didn’t fly planes or jets; instead, he got into the weather bureau. During this period, he married. He and his wife had no children, and they divorced by 1971.
Jim moved back to California, got into electronics and married again. He worked for the Sylvania Company in the earliest days of computers. Two children were born this time—Erin and Ty. Yet even the bond of children did not keep the marriage together. This one fell apart in 1987.
Looking for a change of scene and retiring from electronics, Jim moved from the Bay Area up to Laytonville, north of the “Wine Country.” It was a town of about one thousand people set among redwood forests, oaks and hills. In his new surroundings, Jim began to become interested in rocks, gems and lapidary. His speciality was sun stones from Oregon and he even bought a turquoise mine near Mina, Nevada. He loved going to rock and gem shows all around the West and this brought him into contact with Jenny Villarin, who was making jewelry at the time.
They were a good pair. Jim was very gentlemanly and kind; Jenny was sweet and a free spirit. They began a relationship that was more good buddies than a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. Selina liked Jim a lot as well. They became good friends. Jim treated Selina like he treated everyone, with kindness and consideration.
Jim liked playing cards and socializing. He was well-known for his generous spirit, and often bought rounds of drinks for others, or bought them lunches. Jim always seemed to be looking out for other people.
A woman who knew both Jim and Jenny during this period was Rosanne Lusk Urban. She recalled, “I lived in Lagunitas and Jenny was my best friend. We took to each other immediately. Jenny was generous, kind, sweet and giving. She was very gentle and honest. She held different jobs—worked at an office, cleaned houses, made jewelry. She busted her butt to make ends meet. She was a hard worker.”
Jenny met a new boyfriend who wanted to move back to Pennsylvania. Even though she and Selina loved Marin County, they pulled up roots to follow him there. It was not a good move. According to Rosanne, the new boyfriend did not treat them well, especially Jenny. Yet she and Selina stuck it out there for five years.
Selina missed Marin County and her friends so much that she decided to move back to California on her own in 1998. This brought her back into the Villarin family’s realm in the Salinas/San Jose area. For a while Selina lived with her aunt Olga and applied for college in Saratoga. She took graphic-arts classes and even made silk screens of her father Elvin Bishop’s album covers. She was proud of her dad and got along well with him, even if her mother didn’t.
Around this time, Selina was remembered by her cousin Lucia Villarin. Lucia said, “Selina had a tiny voice, but a big heart.”
Deciding that was where she wanted to live, she moved back into the area and often stayed with Gloria LaFranchi and her family. Rosanne Urban said, “I knew when Selina came back, Jenny would be back soon. They were inseparable. They loved each other very much.”
Not long after that, Jim Gamble heard through a friend of Jenny’s, that she wanted to move back from Pennsylvania, but she didn’t have a car or enough money to move. Good friend that he was, Jim dropped everything and drove all the way back to Pennsylvania to help Jenny move. Rosanne Urban said, “He was the type of guy to do that. He was so generous.”
These were very happy times for Selina and Jenny back in Marin County. Brother Robert recalled one particular barbecue. “Jenny came up to me, put her arms around me and said, ‘I love you.’ She didn’t do it for any particular reason. It’s just the way she was.”
On Christmas Day, 1999, Selina wrote in her journal that it was the first time she and her mother had spent Christmas together in three years. She wrote that a person never knew what new experiences life would bring. She said that she’d been particularly happy lately. Then she added that as a treat, they opened presents, ate eggs benedict and drank mimosa. Then while her mom took a nap, she lay in a Jacuzzi tub and it was so relaxing, she nearly fell asleep.
A few days later, she wrote, “January 2, 2000—Well, the world didn’t end. The world got through another year, from what I’ve seen of the news. This New Year was very peaceful. I am on the journey of my life.”
Olga could see how happy Selina and Jenny were by the year 2000. She went to visit her a lot of times with her kids. They played in the Miwok Village Park. In one photo that Olga snapped, Selina was inside a giant burned-out redwood log, while her children sat on top of the stump.
Sherrie Lynn, Selina’s twelve-year-old cousin, said that Selina was like a big sister to her that year. She loved it when Selina took her over to Japan Town in San Francisco. It was a treat to go across the Golden Gate Bridge into the city. Japan Town was filled with exotic items and restaurants from that nation.
Sherrie said, “Selina was never one to judge people. She was an all-around great person. It was great to have such a cool aunt.”
To get on her feet back in Marin County, Selina took a job as a waitress at the Two Bird Café, the same café where she had sipped chocolate while waiting for the school bus as a child. Two Bird owner Micelli was happy to hire Selina. He said, “She was great. Friendly, responsible and always had a big smile. Just the kind of person you like to have as a waitress.”
Jenny and Selina stayed at various times with Jenny’s friend Gloria LaFranchi. Jenny and Selina mixed in so well with the family, it was more like being close relations than just friends. They also stayed on occasion with Rosanne Urban. There was mutual admiration between Rosanne and Jenny.
Jenny got a job at the Paper Mill Creek Saloon and also a job at the Nicassio Store. She even worked part-time helping kids at a day camp in the area.
Urban noticed that a different relationship had grown between Selina and her mother after their return from Pennsylvania. She said, “They were more like friends than a mother and daughter. They really liked each other’s company. They hung out together.”