The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014

by Daniel Handler

  Winer accepted the case. Margaret Singer was hired to serve as an expert witness, but Nivette agreed to a pretrial settlement. Penniless, he left Carmel and disappeared.

  A few years later, in 1997, an eighteen-month-old boy was found abandoned on a street in an industrial section of San Bruno, near the San Francisco airport. On the same day, the body of a young woman named Gina Barnett was discovered in an apartment in Folsom. Barnett’s boyfriend identified the San Bruno infant as her child. The father, he said, was James Nivette. Police learned that he had shot Barnett and ditched his son on the way to the airport, then fled to France.

  Nivette was extradited four years later. He is currently serving eighteen years to life at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo.

  “Croatia has produced a lot of great tennis players,” said Dr. Robinson. “Goran Ivanišević. Novak Djokovic.”

  “Djokovic is Serbian.”

  “Do you play tennis? I’m actually an excellent tennis player myself.”

  Stella spoke with Dr. Robinson for hours at a time. He bristled when she called him Doctor. He preferred Teacher. He explained that the world programs you in ways that limit your freedom, and that it was his job to deprogram her. If she didn’t pick up the phone immediately when he called, he became furious.

  “What were you doing that you couldn’t pick up the phone? Be honest. Were you out with a boy?”

  “My phone was at the bottom of my purse. I didn’t hear it ringing.”

  “I’m taking time away from my practice to talk with you. Do you know how many people are on my waiting list? How many psychiatrists come to me for advice because their methods are ineffective? I’m going to have to think about whether I want to speak with you again.”

  She apologized and promised to carry the phone in her hand at all times.

  Dr. Robinson sighed. “I know it’s hard for you. My main goal is to help you grow. And you are beginning to grow. But in order to reach the next dimension, you need to allow yourself to be more free.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Have you taken the pictures of yourself like I asked you to?”

  “Yes.” She had taken photographs of her face.

  “Send them to me. I want to see how free you are.”

  Dr. Robinson liked the photographs she sent.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said. “But I can see that you’re not completely free. Can you do something for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stand in front of the mirror fully naked. Take a picture of your body.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  “Don’t you feel comfortable naked? You’re a unique, beautiful human being. You have to trust me. When you show me the most intimate parts of yourself I can connect with your real nature, and then I can lead you to your true self.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “There’s a girl here with us who reminds me of you. Her name is Kati. She recently immigrated, too—from Turkey. You would like her. Maybe one day you can come visit us. But first you must prove to me that you’re ready.”

  Although most cults use the same basic psychological techniques, they each have their own codes, symbols, and lexicon. Often the only way to reach an indoctrinated member is to communicate in the cult’s language. In order to master this vocabulary, Sullivan must join the cult himself.

  “David is a chameleon,” says Patrick O’Reilly, a psychologist specializing in undue influence. “I’ve seen him work closely with gunrunners, psychopathic murderers, cult leaders. He’s excellent at assimilating to any subculture, and he is relentless about getting information. He has an uncanny ability to become whatever it is the person is looking for.”

  During the winter of 2001, Sullivan infiltrated an organization based in Salt Lake City called Impact Trainings. The group, which is still active today, placed advertisements for its “Harmony” seminars, which promised to “empower the human spirit toward a free, unconditional loving and joyful life.” The seminars were held in large, windowless warehouses and lasted as long as four days. They were led by “facilitators” who established psychological control over the trainees through public humiliation.

  Two days into the seminar, Sullivan found himself hiding behind the warehouse, lying prostrate beneath some bushes, whispering into a dying cell phone.

  “I think they’re going to kill me,” he said. “My cover’s blown.”

  Sullivan hadn’t slept since the seminar started. He had been forced to subsist on a near-starvation diet: sugar pops and water. (Protein deprivation is a common tactic; without protein you can’t think.) All he wanted was to return to the warehouse, announce who he was, try to persuade as many people as possible to leave, then run outside to his rental car and race to the airport. But Kim Kruglick, an attorney who had hired Sullivan on the recommendation of Margaret Singer, wouldn’t hear of it.

  “What the hell are we paying you for?” Kruglick said. “Get back in there!”

  “You don’t understand,” Sullivan whispered. “I’m at the end of my rope. I can’t take it anymore.”

  “But you can’t leave now. You haven’t even been reborn yet!”

  The phone died.

  Kruglick was serving as a defense attorney in a bizarre murder case in Marin County. On August 7, 2000, nine nylon duffel bags containing dismembered body parts floated to the surface of the Mokelumne River near Sacramento. Early that morning, Marin County police arrested Glenn Taylor Helzer, thirty, a charismatic, handsome former Morgan Stanley stockbroker; his brother, Justin, twenty-eight; and Dawn Godman, twenty-six, a depressive, overweight woman who lived with the Helzers at their home in Concord, California.

  Godman had met the Helzer brothers a year earlier, at a murder-mystery dinner hosted by the Latter-day Saints Temple in Walnut Creek. The Helzers stood out from the rest of the congregation. They dressed in black and spoke in koans. They had been raised in a strict Mormon family, but Taylor was beginning to stray. He had attended seminars conducted by Impact Trainings and encouraged Godman to go through the Harmony training. After she completed the first two levels, Taylor announced that he would take over as her personal trainer.

  Inspired by Harmony, Taylor planned to start his own self-help group, Transform America, part of a grand scheme to bring about Christ’s millennial reign. He decided that God had put him on earth to take over the Mormon church and become its true prophet. His younger brother and Godman were his first two disciples.

  God told Taylor that the best way to overthrow the Mormon church was to adopt Brazilian orphans and train them to be assassins. Once they became teenagers, the child mercenaries would execute the fifteen highest-ranking officers of the Mormon church, preparing the way for Taylor’s ascension. But Taylor needed money to finance this operation.

  One idea was to import underage girls, again from Brazil, and use them to blackmail Taylor’s married clients at Morgan Stanley. Another was to have his girlfriend, Keri Mendoza, pose for Playboy. This plan worked—the magazine accepted Mendoza’s photos—but after she was named Playmate of the Month for September 2000 she broke up with Taylor and kept the money for herself. (At the Helzers’ murder trial, Mendoza testified that the plan to import underage Brazilian girls “didn’t feel right to me in my heart.”)

  On July 30, 2000, the Helzers and Godman kidnapped Ivan and Annette Stineman, two of Taylor’s elderly banking clients. Taylor ordered Ivan to write Godman a check for $100,000. Taylor then beat Ivan to death, and Justin cut Annette’s throat. Later that day the Helzers killed Taylor’s girlfriend, Selina Bishop, who they worried might be able to connect them to the Stineman murders; Bishop’s mother and a friend were staying at her apartment, so they were killed, too. The Helzers butchered the five corpses, mixing up the bodies in different duffel bags, rented Jet Skis, and dumped the bags in the river. God had neglected to educate Taylor in the chemistry of decomposition, however, and several days later, when the remains began to leach gases, the bags floated to th
e surface.

  Godman could avoid the death penalty by testifying against the Helzers. But she still believed that Taylor was a prophet and that she would soon transcend the prison walls and reunite with him in heaven. She refused to speak with her lawyers; in fact she refused to speak with anyone who hadn’t been reborn through Harmony. That’s when her lawyers called David Sullivan.

  The Harmony trainings were led by a man called the Trainer. He had a sonorous voice, a helmet of hair, and impeccable self-confidence. His enforcers were called Angels. On the first day, the Trainer conducted an exercise in which each trainee—there were about eighty in the class—confessed his or her greatest failures. Then the trainees were given new names. A victim of incest became Daddy’s Joytoy; a woman with a history of cutting herself was Slice and Dice; an unmarried pregnant woman was White Trash Slut. It was forbidden to call anyone by anything other than his or her nickname. Because Sullivan “thought too much,” the Trainer christened him Anal-Cranial Inversion.

  Trainees were taught that they were responsible for their misfortunes. Daddy’s Joytoy, for instance, was told that she had seduced her father. An obese woman was forced to wear a cow costume. At one point the Trainer singled out a pretty blonde who kept one of her hands in her pocket at all times.

  “Be honest with us,” said the Trainer. “You despise your husband. You despise your children.”

  “That’s not true,” the woman said. “I love my family.”

  “Take your hand out of your pocket.”

  She shook her head pleadingly.

  “Hold up your hand!”

  Sobbing, she obeyed. Her fingers were fused together in the shape of a triangle.

  “See how ugly your hand is?” said the Trainer. “That’s the ugliness you carry around inside of you!”

  The night before Sullivan called Kim Kruglick from the bushes, the trainees were divided into groups of seven. Each group member was made to stand silently while the others took turns screaming in his or her face. They stood as close as drill sergeants, so you could feel their breath and spittle.

  “You are scum!”

  “You’re a rip-off! You’re incapable of love! You’ve wasted your life!”

  “Prostitute!”

  “Fat ass!”

  “Pervert!”

  To avoid suspicion, Sullivan yelled as vociferously as the others, but he was beginning to wonder how much longer he could hold up. One young woman in his group was so anguished that, in the middle of her session, she started vomiting quietly down the front of her dress.

  Sullivan became especially concerned about the attentions of one fellow trainee, an attractive, poised woman with dark, intelligent eyes. He didn’t remember her name, but privately he thought of her as the Observant One. He caught her staring at him and wondered whether she had been planted by the Angels.

  After the screaming exercise, the Trainer gave a new command: “Walk around the room and find the person you most despise.”

  The Observant One grabbed Sullivan immediately.

  “You,” she said. “Anal-Cranial Inversion.”

  The trainees were told to sit with their partners and spend fifteen minutes talking about how much they hated each other. As soon as they were alone, the Observant One leaned forward.

  “I chose you because I don’t think you’re like the others,” she whispered. “I think you’re a spy. Or maybe the police.”

  Sullivan began to wonder whether he could outsprint the nearest Angel to the parking lot.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “You got me all wrong—”

  “You have to get me out of here.”

  “What?”

  “Please. You’re the only hope I have left.” An Angel passed near them.

  “You’re despicable!” said Sullivan loudly. “You’re a liar! You’re beneath contempt!”

  The Angel walked away.

  “I was forced to come here,” the woman continued. “I had cancer. My fiancé left me. My boss took over my life. He told me that I had to attend the training. But I can’t take it anymore.”

  Sullivan empathized with her. Two years earlier he had been diagnosed with liver cancer, and his girlfriend had abandoned him in the middle of treatment. He wanted to help the Observant One, but he couldn’t jeopardize the Godman case. He told himself not to break character. Then he broke character.

  “Listen,” he said. “You’re going to put us both in serious danger if you don’t do exactly as I tell you.”

  He pointed out the surveillance cameras. There was a control room where the Angels watched video monitors. He would wander into the control room and make a scene. As soon as the Angels glanced away from the monitors, she would have to escape. To buy time after she left, Sullivan would claim that she was in the bathroom being sick. When they finally realized she was missing, she’d be in Wyoming.

  Two hours later, when the Angels discovered that the Observant One had escaped, they turned their attention to Sullivan. He was ordered to stand in the Humiliation Box. The Angels took turns shouting into his face. He was not allowed to sit, go to the bathroom, eat, or drink. When Sullivan got back to his room that night it looked like it had been searched.

  The next morning, hoping to discourage further suspicion, Sullivan embraced his activities with renewed vigor. During a session in which the trainees were asked to deliver self-debasing monologues, Sullivan became so overwrought that he punched his chair until his knuckles bled. An Angel brought him a bag of ice. But he knew he’d have to do more.

  The Trainer began his redemption speech. This is the second part of the brainwashing process; after being broken down psychologically, the initiate is overwhelmed with acceptance and love.

  “No matter how low you’ve sunk,” said the Trainer in his booming, paternal voice, “I can offer you a way out. If you are willing to take my hand, we can move forward. We can find our way to a new life—”

  Sullivan jumped to his feet.

  “Yes!” he cried. “I feel it!”

  The Trainer and the Angels looked at him in astonishment.

  “Oh sir,” said Sullivan, “oh sir, can I please express what’s inside me right now?”

  “Sure, Anal-Cranial Inversion,” said the Trainer. “What is it?”

  “May I?”

  The Trainer shrugged and handed Sullivan the microphone. Before the Trainer had time to reconsider, Sullivan leaped onto the stage and belted out, in a trembling baritone, the first lines of “The Impossible Dream (The Quest),” from Man of La Mancha. He built it gradually, the emotion in his voice rising. The crowd watched in awe. Some of the trainees began to sob. The head Angel embraced Sullivan. By the end, many in the audience had joined in and they all sang together, louder and louder, teary and off-key: “To dream . . . the impossible dream!”

  Anal-Cranial Inversion had been redeemed. He graduated the training and was pronounced reborn. The Trainer even invited him to the training for Angels. He had been deemed worthy to brainwash the next group of initiates.

  Sullivan returned for the second training a month later, and then attended one of Godman’s pretrial hearings. He got her attention while sitting in the audience, flashing hand signals he had learned at Harmony: an open palm with four fingers spread wide, indicating that he was a trusted, heart connection. Godman beamed. When he visited her jail cell, she welcomed him with a wide, blissful smile. She believed he had walked through the prison walls, that he was Archangel Michael, come to save her.

  He met with her regularly for six weeks. Slowly she began to realize what had happened to her.

  “Taylor wasn’t a prophet, was he?” she finally said.

  “No,” said Sullivan. “He’s not a prophet.”

  She broke down.

  “You mean we killed all those people for nothing?”

  Godman testified against the Helzers. Today Taylor is on death row at San Quentin; Justin committed suicide in prison earlier this year. Godman is at the Valley St
ate Prison for Women in Chowchilla. She will be eligible for parole in 2043.

  “You were supposed to call twenty minutes ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Stella. “I had bad dreams. I overslept.”

  “You’re like a little puppy. If I let you in my house, you would put your dirty paws all over the furniture, soil the carpet, drink from the toilet.”

  “Last night—”

  “Listen to me!” said Dr. Robinson. “You never listen to me. It’s all your father’s fault—he never showed you enough affection. He was too tough on you. That caused great damage.”

  “Yes, Teacher. I know.”

  “You are just like Kati. The intimacy problems, the troubled background. Unlike you, however, she is diligent, committed, and responsible. Is there a street you walk down every day on the way to your babysitting job?”

  Stella couldn’t tell whether Dr. Robinson was being rhetorical. Dr. Robinson was often being rhetorical.

  “I asked you a question.”

  “Yes,” she said. “There is such a street.”

  “Have you ever felt that this street is beautiful one day but ugly the next?”

  “I guess.”

  “Of course you have! That’s proof, you see, that reality is all in our heads. It’s not the street’s fault. The street is always the same. It’s us—we’re the ones who change. You understand?”

  She murmured her assent.

  “Have you begun to perceive the benefits of our conversations?”

  “I feel better, but I don’t know why. Last night I had a dream that I was a turtle, and my shell was peeling off.”

  “That’s very good. The shell, you see, is the hardness in you. And you must peel it away in order to access the real Stella. You are making progress.”

  “Yes, Teacher.”

  “One thing concerns me, however. In the pictures you sent, you’re wearing a dress. You’re wearing tights. Everything is covered.”

  “I don’t feel comfortable taking naked photographs of myself.”