Unholy Sacrifice

by Robert Scott

Rico LaFranchi, Gloria’s son, was eighteen in 2000 and he thought of Selina as his sister. They liked hanging out together and going to parties. And by 2000, they also liked attending raves. One rave in particular stood out in Rico LaFranchi’s mind. He said later, “In April 2000, there was an underground rave in Guerneville. There were no flyers or anything. You just called a number about seven P.M. and got directions.

  “Selina and I went. It was a small rave, as those things go. It was very peaceful. People dancing and giving each other back rubs. There was ecstasy there.”

  Rico took some ecstasy at the rave and so did Selina. Of that particular experience, Rico said, “It made me feel happy. I could feel the beat. Relaxed. Everybody was having a good time. There was no violence.”

  Rico noticed that Selina got her ecstasy from one particular dealer at the rave. Rico said later, “The guy stood out. A lot of people wear colorful clothes at raves, but he was dressed all in black. He was about six foot two, tall and lean, and his hair was tied back in a ponytail.”

  Selina seemed to be very taken with this ecstasy dealer and she hung out with him for most of the night. When she and Rico left the rave around three in the morning, she told him that the dealer was named Jordan, but that wasn’t his real name. He kept that a secret. “Jordan” lived somewhere over in the East Bay. In fact, Jordan was Taylor Helzer.

  From that point on, Selina became very enamored of Jordan. One person who realized this was Selina’s friend Julia Bernbaum. She’d been a friend of Selina’s since the sixth grade. Bernbaum said, “Selina was my best friend. We grew up together. She was usually quiet, but she had a wild side too. She liked going to dances and meeting people. She began seeing this guy named Jordan. She said she knew that wasn’t his real name. That added to his mysterious appeal. It made him exciting for her. He wined and dined her. He always seemed to have lots of money. He didn’t say where he got it, but she guessed it might have been from drug sales. In fact, Selina started selling ecstasy with him at raves in May. She said she was very into him.”

  Rosanne recalled, “She talked a lot about her new boyfriend. She was kind of naive. It was kind of like puppy love. She was kind of like a young teenage girl.”

  Selina spent every chance she could with Jordan. She truly believed that he loved her. Her life seemed to be on a definite upswing. She even decided to get a place of her own in Marin County. According to one source, it was Jordan who pushed her to get her own place. Perhaps he was already thinking that he could eliminate her easier if she lived in her own residence.

  Jay and Leora Soladay owned a split-level house on Redwood Drive in Woodacre. They lived on the upper floor, with their one-year-old baby, Ty, and decided to rent out the lower portion of the house in June 2000.

  The Soladays placed a sign on the community bulletin board, at the local post office, telling of the rental. There were a few responses, but the Soladays weren’t crazy about some of them. Then they noticed a card on the bulletin board from Selina. Her note was cute and pleasant. When they met her in person, they liked her immediately.

  Leora said later, “Selina moved in, in mid-June. She was sweet. There was a nice way about her and she was great with Ty. We rented the lower quarters to her for eight hundred dollars a month.

  “She’d go up and play with Ty, and we’d sit and chat. Sometimes we chatted about her new boyfriend. She seemed to be very taken with him.”

  Unfortunately, Selina did not know that Jordan was not taken with her. She was only an instrument in his scheme. He devised an incredible tale for her. He said that he was going to come into a lot of money from a great-uncle and that he didn’t want his ex-wife to know about it.

  Taylor wanted her to open up five accounts and he would funnel the money to her to place $125,000 in the accounts. He said that she could keep $5,000 from each account—in other words, $25,000.

  This plan changed in some respects over time, but mainly stayed the same. All he needed was her willing compliance. To this end, he did wine and dine her and take her dancing.

  On one occasion, he, Selina, Dawn and Justin all went to Ashkenaz, a place in Berkeley, to listen to a reggae band. Dawn pretended to be friends with Selina and was talkative. In the back of her mind, however, Dawn realized that Selina would have to be sacrificed. Dawn said later, “Taylor and I talked about whether or not she (Selina) was the right person for the role. We prayed that God would send the right person. And that person would give up their life for a greater cause.

  “I never asked Selina if she was willing to give up her life for the Children of Thunder [as Taylor, Justin, and Dawn now called themselves]. But I was willing to take her life for the Children of Thunder.

  “The right person was whoever Spirit led Taylor to. As time went on, that person seemed to be Selina Bishop.”

  Julia Bernbaum learned of Selina’s trip to Ashkenaz with Jordan, “Sky” (Dawn Godman) and “Jason,” Jordan’s brother. Bernbaum said, “She thought Sky was cool. She babbled on and on about them. She was excited. This was her new crowd. She thought of Jordan as this mystery man. She was intrigued. She said he was charming and dynamic. She was enthralled and a little bit in awe of him.”

  Selina wrote in a letter that she was “just chillin’” in her new place and very excited about it. She said that she and Julia could use the pool that her new landlords had. She wrote that her place would be “cute” when she got some new furniture.

  Selina was especially hopeful that Julia would meet Jordan. She said that she had never met anyone like him before, and she hoped he would stay with her. Selina cautioned that Jordan would be very busy for the next couple of months on some project. On the bright side, it would give her and Julia more time to hang out together. Selina wrapped it up by saying that she was very proud to have a new home and that she’d never been happier.

  CHAPTER 5

  Children of Thunder

  Taylor Helzer decided that he needed a house to plan everything in private with Justin and Dawn. Since he wasn’t working, it was going to be up to Justin and Dawn to foot the bills, but Taylor had them so much under his influence at that that would not be a problem. All he had to do was to get Justin to leave his present residence.

  All winter and spring of 2000, Justin had been living in a house on Wren Lane in Concord. He was only renting a room in the house and had other housemates there as well. One of these was Johnette Gray. Gray already knew Justin well because they had started to work for AT&T at the same time in 1999. Since Johnette’s own house was in Sacramento, about seventy miles away, and she worked in Concord, she decided to rent a room in Concord during the workweek and go home on days off.

  She related about Justin, “He was naive and a slow learner on the job. Very methodical and patient. He addressed everything in a thoughtful way. I accepted him, but noticed he was very unusual.

  “When we went to lunch, he had an unusual way of eating. It was loud and he’d chew with his mouth open. He’d chew his food very slowly. He was mainly a vegetarian, but he would eat an occasional burger.”

  Once Gray was in the house with Justin, she was able to observe his habits more closely. She noticed that he was very regimented in his living and always ate and went to bed at the same time. He didn’t watch television and would only listen to a radio in his room once in a while.

  Gray also noticed that Justin could be talking about something and then suddenly stop, as if he’d run out of steam. Once, he even told her, “I don’t want to talk anymore. Just because I’m in your presence doesn’t mean I want someone to talk to me.”

  Despite these quirks, Gray thought that Justin was “naturally nice and gentle.” He talked about spiritual issues once in a while, but he didn’t proselytize. It wouldn’t have worked with her anyway—she was a confirmed atheist.

  Gray also observed how Justin exercised and meditated daily. His exercises were yoga in nature and very physical, almost to the realm of martial arts. When he did these exercises, he grunted and moaned and cur
sed. Eventually the landlady had to tell him to tone them down.

  Justin told Gray that he had been raised Mormon, but now he wasn’t so sure about their doctrines. He said that he’d been to a retreat in Sacramento called Harmony and he really liked it. To Gray, it seemed that the retreat wasn’t so much religious in nature as it was a self-awareness group. Justin showed her a video of Harmony, but Gray was not impressed. She said later of its leader, “The woman looked kind of lost.”

  The only socializing Justin did while at Wren Lane was to go out once in a while to a Goth club. At those times, he would dress up in black clothes, black boots and black cape. It was his one foray at being hip.

  Since Johnette Gray wrote poetry, Justin decided to show her a poem he had written. She read it and said later, “It was very unusual and creepy. Especially the last lines.” The poem described bloodletting and the sacrifice of someone on an altar. The sacrifice victim gave his life for the greater good of humanity.

  When Johnette was through reading it, she asked Justin, “Did you dream this?”

  “No,” he answered.

  She responded, “Well, it would make a good scary movie.”

  Justin and Johnette also had another housemate named Michael Henderson. Like Gray, Henderson noticed Justin’s strange eating habits and said, “He really got into his food. He was like a little kid. The food would get all over his face. He was unusual. But we got along.”

  Working on Justin’s vulnerabilities and fears, Taylor painted the picture of a world that needed saving. He tapped into Justin’s considerable mistrust of the federal government, which had been reinforced by Bo Gritz. According to Taylor, America needed redirection, and they were the ones to do it. But first they needed adequate accommodations. Something set away from prying eyes. They needed a house of their own.

  Tom Cheng managed a house that his cousin rented on Saddlewood Court in Concord. This was in a nice suburban part of town near the Mount Diablo foothills. In the spring of 2000, the people who had been living in the rental house for a number of years moved out, and the house was up for rent again. Cheng hired a real estate agent to show the house and several people looked at it. One of those people was Justin Helzer. Justin was duly impressed with the house. It seemed to fit the parameters that Taylor had laid down—in a quiet neighborhood, where they would not be conspicuous behind closed doors.

  Justin went to look at it a second time and brought his sister Sky, who was actually Dawn Godman. Justin met at the house with Tom Cheng and Justin seemed like a “nice guy” to Cheng. Cheng showed Justin around the house and they did a walk-through. They both agreed to what shape the house was in and noted all the defects.

  An agreement was written that only Justin would be the one living in the house with no other people there. Cheng asked why Justin needed so much space, since he was going to be living on his own. Justin answered that he needed one bedroom for exercise, one bedroom for meditation and one bedroom for sleeping. Justin never mentioned that Taylor and Dawn would be moving into the house as well.

  A rental agreement was signed by Justin on April 29, 2000. The rent would be $1,650 a month. He made an initial deposit of $3,650 to move in. Justin paid Cheng with a cashier’s check.

  Despite the fact that only Justin was supposed to live at the house on Saddlewood Court, Dawn and Taylor soon moved in with him. The residence would not only be a living space for them—it would be the launching pad for all of Taylor’s schemes.

  Dawn later explained, “There would be three insiders. This was because when Christ went to the New World in the Book of Mormon, three disciples asked to remain with him until the Second Coming. There was a parallel story in the Bible. In the Book of John in the Bible, John requested of Jesus that he stay until the Second Coming. John’s father was called Thunder.

  “I took on the name Sky, Taylor took on the name Jordan and Justin took on the name Jason.

  “The J letters were significant. Both of the original Sons of Thunder’s names (John and James) started with the letter J. In the first inception of Taylor’s plans, there was a kidnapping plan to kidnap five people. We would get their stock portfolio information. These would be placed into another person’s account and then it would be funneled to Taylor. The five people would have to be killed and then the person who opened the account would have to be killed as well.”

  By this time, Taylor, Justin and Dawn knew that the account holder would be Selina Bishop. They still weren’t sure who the people who owned stocks and mutual funds would be.

  “Our meetings began in earnest at Saddlewood,” Dawn said. “Taylor told Justin he needed a gun. It was understood why he needed the gun.”

  On May 5, 2000, Michael Raymond was working at Hogan’s Sporting Goods in Concord. A tall, blond-haired young man with a ponytail came into the store asking to see some handguns. The handguns were kept in the back of Hogan’s and Raymond took the young man back there to view a display case. The young man was Justin Helzer.

  Justin told Raymond that he had used a 9mm Beretta pistol as an MP in the military and liked them. Raymond gave him one of the guns from the display case to look at, and Justin handled it. It was a semiautomatic Beretta 92.

  Justin liked the gun and decided to purchase it. He showed his driver’s license and military discharge papers. The driver’s license had his old address printed on it. The total cost for the purchase came to $550.

  While he was at it, Justin bought a box of .22 shells and .762 Russian ammo that would work in an AK-47 assault rifle. He also bought some 12-gauge shotgun shells. Justin gave the clerk his old address on Wren Avenue as his place of residence.

  On June 6, a person calling herself Sky Anderson bought a Craftsman, Model 315, reciprocating saw and blades at a Sears store. She paid $117.42 in cash for the items. Later, she went online with eBay and purchased a Stun Master taser. It could produce up to a hundred thousand volts and drop a person to the floor instantly. Dawn paid $79.95 in all for two tasers. She used a false name and a PO box for the place where the tasers were to be delivered.

  In June, Selina Bishop was at a mall and had some photos taken at a machine there. Some of them were meant for Jordan. Selina told Bernbaum that Jordan was cooking up some scheme and was going to get a whole lot of money. She said that Jordan didn’t want to share any of the money with his ex-wife, so he was going to funnel the money into an account that Selina would set up in her name. She seemed to think that Jordan was going to receive $200,000, and that he would give her half. Later, this was modified to $100,000, and she would get $20,000.

  Selina told friend Jordan Miller a slightly different version of this. According to Miller, “Selina was very much in love with Jordan. He told her that he was getting an inheritance from his great-uncle and the money would allow them to live together. He needed to hide this from his ex-wife. It was about one hundred twenty-five thousand and she would get twenty-five thousand, if she helped him in his scheme.

  “My boyfriend, Jess, and I weren’t happy about this scheme. But she said she was so happy with him. We didn’t want to burst her bubble. After all the struggles in her life, we were happy for her.

  “I wanted to see a photo of this Jordan, but he wouldn’t let her take one of him. He said he was protecting her from his drug ring. We were supposed to meet him at a bar in San Francisco, but I had to work and he was always changing his plans.

  “I did hear one of his messages on her phone machine, and it was full of love. But she was upset because she couldn’t go over his house. He did buy her a cell phone so he could call her anytime.”

  On July 2, 2000, Dawn bought three ski masks at Copeland’s Sports in Concord. She then bought three pairs of water-ski gloves. Dawn had to return later, however, because two of the gloves were too small for Justin and Taylor. They needed extra-large gloves for their hands. Clerk Elizabeth Hand on that occasion recalled Dawn at her counter with a man in the background. The man was probably either Taylor or Justin.

  Dawn also
bought some weights for a weight set. They eventually were to be used for the weight they could add to a bag, not for exercise. These cost $49. Dawn paid for all of this with cash.

  Pagers were purchased for the Children of Thunder so they could keep in touch with each other. These were purchased at Double Header Pagers. And a voice mail service was opened up for Dawn, Taylor and Justin. All three members of Children of Thunder had cell phones as well, but Justin rarely used his.

  On July 10, Dawn adopted a young Rottweiler at the Contra Costa County Animal Services Center. The dog was named Jake. Later that day, Taylor adopted a Border collie and named him Blackie. A third dog, an Australian shepherd, was adopted by Justin and named Taser.

  They also adopted a fourth dog, a large mastiff, but due to its massive 180 pounds, and aggressiveness, the animal control center required that the dog be spayed and neutered. The operation was done, but neither Taylor nor Justin nor Dawn ever picked up the mastiff.

  The dogs were part of Taylor’s scheme—he wanted to see if the dogs would eat human remains if they were chopped up and fed to them. Dawn began to build a dog run in the backyard of the Saddlewood residence. She hammered and nailed and used the reciprocating saw. Neighbor Kaye Shaman was aware of a lot of construction and a lot of noise coming from the backyard of her neighbor’s house.

  The meetings of the Children of Thunder were on a daily basis now at Saddlewood. All of them would sit down in a circle and open each meeting with a prayer. Then Taylor would give out his ideas. Dawn said later, “We’d talk about if an idea was a valid one or not. Whether it would work and how expensive it might be. When Taylor talked, I believed that Spirit was talking through him.

  “We believed as Children of Thunder we were declaring war on Satan. This was so Satan wouldn’t get the opportunity to be loosed upon the earth. Evil was Satan and his minions. He was the opposite of God. God is pure joy. But Satan was the balance. Such as light and dark. Joy and sadness. Satan was the balance of God.