Jesus Freaks (21 page)
Authors: Don Lattin
DANNY HOLLIS DOESN'T USUALLY
work on Sundays, but they'd drained the irrigation canals the week before and were still making repairs. They needed to get the system up and running as soon as possible, so Danny and his crew had pulled a Sunday shift.
Danny Hollis stands in the driveway where Ricky's body was discovered.
Hollis saw the four-door Chevy sedan with Washington plates parked outside the fence when he came to work at 6: 30
A.M.
He didn't
think much of it at first. Weary motorists were known to pull off Interstate 10 and park in the wide driveway to take a nap.
Hollis headed out to the fields to check on the repairs. He returned ninety minutes later and noticed that the guy in the Chevy was still asleep. Walking up to the car, Danny saw that the driver was in a strange position, leaning way back and over to the right. Then he saw all the blood and the brain matter splattered over the seats. He turned away and hustled back to the office to call the cops.
Patrolman Troy Fabanich and Sgt. Robert Matthews were the first two officers to arrive. Fabanich saw a pistol between the driver's right leg and the center console of the Cavalier. He checked the subject's pulse. There was none, and the body was cold to the touch. A team of paramedics arrived and pronounced the subject dead at 8: 11
A.M.
Fabanich secured the crime scene with yellow police tape and awaited the arrival of Detective Sgt. Jeff Wade.
Sgt. Wade pulled up at 8: 23
A.M.
Evidence technician Valerie Hudson got there at 9: 02
A.M.
and began to photograph the scene and dust the car for prints. It looked like a routine suicide. Then Wade noticed a receipt from “The UPS Store” stuffed in the pocket of the driver's door. Someone by the name of “Ricky Rodriguez” had sent three video tapes to three different peopleâto a Sara Martin in San Diego, an Elixcia Munumel in Lakewood, Washington, and to a guy in Santa Fe, New Mexico, named “Tiago.” He dropped them off at the UPS store at 515 E. Grant Street in Tucson the previous morning at 10: 49
A.M.
Wrapped inside the paperwork was a key card from the nearby Holiday Inn Express. Wade sent Sgt. Matthews over to the hotel to investigate.
Deputy Coroner Mike Presley arrived at 9: 49
A.M.
Wade had just picked up a cell phone that was sitting on the front passenger seat and was starting to brief Presley when the phone rang.
“Hello,” he said.
There was a short pause, then a female voice on the other end of the line asked, “Is he dead?”
“Can I ask you who you are?”
“Elixcia Munumel,” the voice said. “I'm his wife!”
“Okay. Try to calm down. Who do you think is dead?”
“Richard Rodriguez.”
“Okay. Here is the situation. My name is Sgt. Jeff Wade, and I am investigating a death of a male subject who has not yet been identified.”
“Oh, my God!” Elixcia cried out, then wept into the phone, barely catching her breath between sobs.
It took Wade several minutes to calm Elixcia down and get some basic information. Her name was Elixcia Munumel. She lived in Lakewood, Washington. She had separated from her husband about six months ago. He moved to San Diego and lived with a friend named Sara. Then he moved to Tucson. He called last night and told her to call the police and tell them to go to his apartment. They would find a body there. Elixcia told Wade she did not know who the victim was. Her husband had been suffering from depression. That might have something to do with all this.
“Did you call the Tucson police?” Wade asked.
“No,” Elixcia said. “I called the police here in Lakewood, but I don't know what they did.”
Wade looked at the receipt from the UPS store.
“Okay. Can you confirm for me that the address of your husband's apartment in Tucson is 2525 North Los Altos. Number 343.”
“Yes,” Elixcia said. “That's it.”
“Okay, Elixcia. Now try to calm down. I will call you back as soon as we confirm the identity of this man.”
1
Wade finished up the call with Elixcia. Then he called the Tucson Police Department, gave them the address, and informed the dispatcher of a report that there might be a body in the apartment. It was the first call the Tucson police had gotten about a possible homicide at that address.
Valerie Hudson, the evidence technician working with Wade, found a spent shell casing in the backseat of the Cavalier. Wade picked up the pistol next to Ricky's right leg and pulled out the magazine. It held ten live rounds of ammunition. Wade placed the magazine in a handgun evidence box that Hudson had brought to the crime scene. The next step was to check to see if there was another live round in the chamber. Wade slid the side of the pistol open and was startled when a large
amount of blood and brain tissue gushed out of the gun and poured into the evidence box. He ejected the final round into the metal box and handed the mess back over to Hudson.
Wade was then authorized by the deputy coroner on the scene to remove a brown wallet from the deceased's left rear pocket. It contained the Arizona driver's license of Richard Peter Rodriguez, confirming the subject's identity. Ricky's wallet also contained an Arizona concealed weapon's permit and a membership card for Jensen's shooting range in Tucson, the gun shop not far from his apartment.
Elixcia told Wade to check for a second wallet Ricky had taped to his leg. It was there, and just as Elixcia said, it contained Ricky's passport and $3300 in cash. “She told me the money was for his cremation,” Wade said, “and to get the car back to her.”
Shortly before noon, the deputy coroner removed the body from the car and transported it to the Frye Mortuary Chapel in Blythe. By then, the Tucson police department had called Sgt. Wade back to inform him that they had, indeed, found a body in the apartment of Richard Peter Rodriguez.
Tucson Police Detective Ben Jimenez had arrived at Ricky's apartment at 12: 45
P.M.
and was brought up to speed by two officers who already checked out the apartment and found the remains of Angela Marilyn Smith, a.k.a. Susan Joy Kauten. Like his counterpart in California, Jimenez initially thought he had pulled a routine murder/suicide.
Jimenez was standing outside Ricky's apartment when Rosemary and Tom Kanspedos walked up. Rosemary told Jimenez she was looking for someone named “Joy,” a friend of the family who had been in town and staying with her sister, Jeannie Deyo. Rosemary explained that she and Jeannie were Ricky's aunts.
Jimenez decided to interview the couple separately, so he took Tom aside for a few questions. He explained that Joy was a good friend of his wife's sister, Jeannie, and her husband, Bill Deyo. They ran an elderly board and care home on the edge of town called Elderhaven. Sue was on the Elderhaven board of directors and was in Tucson for a meeting. Tom told Jimenez about The Family and how Ricky had been raised in the cult and sexually abused as a child by his nannies, including Sue. Ricky's mother, Karen, was now a leader in the cult. Two weeks ago, on Christ
mas Day, Sue had called and talked to Ricky and apparently arranged at that time to meet him last night for dinner. Tom told Jimenez what Sue looked like, and the detective told him the description matched that of the dead woman on the living room floor.
Jeannie later told police that she was first alarmed when Sue failed to return home late Saturday night. In the morning, Jeannie knew something was wrong. It was time to take Sue to the airport, and she hadn't even come back to collect her things. Jeannie called Rosemary to tell her that Sue had disappeared. The call prompted Rosemary and her husband to rush down to Ricky's apartment, where they found the place roped off as a crime scene.
It didn't take long for Detective Jimenez to close the Sue Kauten murder case. Yet several mysteries remain. What did Sue Kauten know about Ricky's mother, and what did she tell Ricky before she died? Why did Ricky head out toward California right after the slaying? Was he on his way to The Family Care Foundation offices in San Diego to extract more information or get more revenge? Was his next victim going to be Gabe Martin, Sarafina's uncle and a Family insider one step closer to Karen Zerby. Or was he planning on heading up Interstate 5 to reunite with Elixcia? Or was he just looking for a quiet spot to kill himself and stop the pain?
If anyone knows Ricky's state of mind that night, it's Elixcia Munumel.
“None of us were surprised he killed himself. It was only a matter of time,” she said. “But I really didn't think he was capable of killing someone else. Berg lured [Sue] into this. Karen Zerby and David Berg are the ones responsible for this. They had the audacity to publish pictures of women sucking on a little baby's thingie. Ricky had to deal with that as a man. It was stabbing him in the back for the rest of his life.”
2
Sue just happened to be the first person who came along. She was the first opportunity he had to execute his plan. “Nothing that Ricky did was not planned out,” Elixcia said. “He hated Sue, but Ricky was good at putting on a good face. He was able to make her believe that it was OK to meet with him.”
Ricky had obsessed over planning his mission. He had spent months working out the details for his revenge, tracking down leads.
He passed untold hours assembling and disassembling the Glock and practicing at the shooting range near his Tucson apartment. He studied martial arts. He devoted himself to getting the sharpest possible edge on his K-bar knife. But he had never actually used that knife or that gun to kill anyone. Not until that night.
“He wanted to get somebody else,” Elixcia said. “He wanted to get to people who were closer to his mother, but [Sue] came along, and then he was just too tired, too exhausted to go on. But he wanted to get other people.”
Tiago agreed.
“Ricky had hoped his mother would show up over Christmas. He had been pretending to reconcile with The Family. But his mother was very careful. Ricky was able to convince his mom to allow the meeting with [Sue]. They [Zerby and Amsterdam] had gotten good reports from Gabe [Sarafina's uncle] in San Diego. They were thinking âRicky seems to be missing home. Ricky seems nicerânot as vengeful. He's willing to make amends. After all, he is our son. Why doesn't Angela drop by and see him?' All this was planned out.”
3
Sue's phone call on Christmas Day was his big breakânot the one he expected, but a chance he could not afford to miss. Two weeks later, the meeting was about to happen. “At that point, he had totally run out of energy,” Tiago said. “You can tell on the video that he is tired. He couldn't make it another day. Here was an opportunity. He wanted to go out with a bang. He deeply believed that was the only way things would change. He deeply believed that it was his responsibility to fix things. He was always apologizing for his motherâfor the way she ran The Family, for all the indoctrination we suffered. He somehow felt like he was responsible because he was her son.”
What really angered Rickyâand what still infuriates many in the second generationâis that their parents still don't get it. Nothing angered Ricky more than people putting down Merry or telling him that his little sister was doing fine in The Family. That is exactly what Sue told Ricky, but the most maddening thing she said turned out to be Sue's final words.
On the phone that last night of his life, Ricky told Elixcia that the hardest thing for him to handle was the fact that Sue didn't understand
why he was so angry. Even as she lay bleeding to death on his living room floor, she didn't understand why he was killing her.
“Oh,” Elixcia said softly into the phone to Ricky. “She didn't get it.”
“That's right,” her husband replied. “She didn't get it! You know, I wasn't expecting that answer. I don't understand
how
they can't see what they've done to us.”
WITHIN WEEKS
of his January 9 suicide, the warring forces of The Family International and its alienated second generation each tried to claim Ricky as their martyr. Each faction set up its own memorial Web site. Even in death, Ricky was still leading a double life.
Karen Zerby and Peter Amsterdam in the mid-nineties.
Sue Kauten's murder and Ricky's suicide unleashed a torrent of media interest in the crime and the cult. There have been waves of
journalistic attention paid toward The Family over the past three decades, but this one was a tidal wave of sensationalism. Sex, murder, suicide, cult, child abuse, incest, pornography, hypocrisy. After the story broke in the January 11 editions of the
San Francisco Chronicle
and the
Arizona Daily Star
, it was picked up and ran in print media ranging from the sleaziest tabloids to the front page of the
New York Times
.
Over the next year, the television newsmagazine shows on CBS,
A
BC, NBC, and CNN broadcast segments on Ricky and The Family. One documentary film on Ricky was produced and at least one other was pitched.
TV
movies were proposed. Montel Williams, the daytime
TV
talk-show host, interviewed Don Irwin (Shula's son and Merry Berg's brother). Dr. Phil televised an emotional family therapy session between Jim LaMattery (the guy who joined The Family in San Diego in 1971) and his angry daughter, Kristianity. The popular NBC police/prosecutor series,
Law and Order
, ran a thinly veiled dramatization where the Karen Zerby character gets tried and convicted. Ricky would have loved that show.
Media controversies around The Family continued more than two years after the murder-suicide. On January 23, 2007âjust two days before Ricky would have celebrated his thirty-second birthdayâa melee erupted at the Slamdance film festival in Park City, Utah, during the premier showing of
Children of God.
1
Protesters from The Family began the ruckus following the screening of the documentary film directed by Noah Thomson, a young Hollywood filmmaker who grew up in the sect. A confrontation between the protesters and one of the film's co-producers spilled out into the street when it was discovered that Family members had apparently made an audiotape during the screening. HBO planned to broadcast the movie later that year.
Thomson grew up in South America, where his parents did missionary work for The Family, and worked in the sect's video ministry before he left the fold at age twenty-one. He had already begun working on the film before Ricky went on his rampage. In an interview with the
San Francisco Chronicle
just days after the murder-suicide, Thomson said he had tried to get Ricky to participate in his project.
“We spoke about a month ago,” Thomson said. “He was interested in doing an interview, then declined. The last time we talked he was speaking about the prophecies that he would be a martyr for the group. He said, âI don't intend to be a martyr.' He joked about it.”
2
There were also heated arguments within the close-knit circle of second-generation defectors and former members over whether to participate in various media projectsâincluding this book. Several insiders were writing their own books about their experiences and memories of Ricky. Arguments in the circle of defectors were conducted both in private and online via at least six different Web sites run by former members of The Family or the children of members. Thousands of pages of internal Family documentsâmany of them incriminatingâhave been posted over the past two years on Web sites like exfamily.org and movingon.org.
Ricky hoped his mission would put the public spotlight on the current leadership of The Family International. Although he succeeded in that effort, he would still be enraged by the fact that none of the top leaders, including his mother, have yet had to defend themselves in an American court of law.
Karen Elba Zerby declined to be interviewed for this book. But writing under the name Maria David, Ricky's mother prepared a eulogy for her son and posted it on www.Rickyrodriquez.com. She refers to her son as “Pete” in that testimony:
Nothing and no one could fill the place Pete occupied in my heart while he was here on Earth. He lived with me for nearly 25 years, something I was very happy about, as I loved him dearly. Pete was a joy to me, a happy child, an exceptional teenager, and an intelligent and charming young manâ¦.
Although he made some decisions in the last portion of his life that have greatly saddened me and those he loved, I know that he is now in a place where he can find rest and peace.
In her eulogy, Zerby went on to say that her son can only find forgiveness if he repents and goes through “the time of learning and rehabilitation that takes place in Heaven for those in need of it.” Zerby
also says that she has heard directly from Jesus Christ about Ricky, the child who was supposed to join her to battle the forces of evil on the eve of the Second Coming. Jesus Christ told Zerby that he has “erased the anger, the pain, and confusion Pete felt. Now he is discovering what he has desired all along. Now he is in a position where he can learn and grow and further develop the gifts and talents that I gave him from the beginning.”
As for the incest allegations against her, Zerby issued a separate statement through her spokeswoman, Claire Borowik, in which she vigorously denied that she ever had sexual relations with her son. Borowik said the “recently hatched apostate tales of Maria engaging in incestuous relations with Ricky” were “absolutely false.”
“This is an absolute lie! Even Ricky himself never accused Maria of such things in his video or his Internet rants about The Family,” she said. “Not only did her son never accuse her of this, neither did any former member until just recently, eight months after Ricky's death, when this absurd story surfaced. Of course, given that Ricky is dead and never alleged that this happened, there is no evidence to support this story.”
Karen Zerby's husband, Peter Amsterdam, said in another statement released by The Family that Ricky only turned against them after he left the fold and “started having a lot of contact with some very vindictive apostates.”
Ricky started coming out with accusations against us, complaints about his upbringing, and demands for money. As his contact with these apostates grew, so did his complaints. This is the cycle of apostasy, which is well documented in scholarly writings. Eventually he told us that he didn't want to be in contact with us at all, and to please stop writing him. Some time later, he came out with a physical threat in a post on a Web site, saying he wanted to find us and kill us.
Some of Ricky's associates apparently were aware of the seriousness of Ricky's threats. They had heard him talk about his desire to kill his mother and they knew he had a penchant for knives. We can only assume that they tried, unsuccessfully, to convince him that this was wrong.
Others are now trying to make Ricky look like an innocent victim, and even a hero and role model, ignoring the fact that he murdered someone. He claimed that it was his deserved “revenge” because of alleged abuses. No matter what his motives might have been, and no matter how overcome by “darkness” he was at the time, that does not justify his killing someone. He was not the victim;
Angela
was the victim. She was a wonderful woman who suffered a cruel and violent death.
Sue Kauten's slaying and Ricky's suicide forced The Family to respond to reams of written evidence that David Berg saw nothing morally wrong with sexual activity between adults and minors. It forced them to respond to allegations by at least three womenâincluding his granddaughterâthat Berg had sexually molested them as children. While The Family statement does not address those specific allegations, it concedes:
In the late '70s The Family's founder, David Berg, published some articles in regards to sex being a God-created natural activity, which could be engaged in without inhibition or sin. This opened the door for sexual experimentation between adults and adults, and minors with minors. However, unfortunately in some cases the lines blurred. In 1986, David Berg and [Zerby], realizing that stringent safeguards hadn't been put in place to protect minors, banned such conduct involving minors and put those safeguards in place. In 1988, David Berg renounced all literature, including his own, that indicated in any way that sexual activity with minors was permissible. All such literature was expunged from our communities. He clearly stated that any sexual activity between an adult and a minor was
not
to be tolerated. It was from that time forward that The Family made this grounds for immediate excommunication from our fellowship.
Another voice yet to be heard is that of Christina Teresa Zerby, also known as “Techi.” Born March 19, 1979, Techi is the daughter of Karen Zerby and the late Michael Sweeney, a devotee known in the
family as Timothy Concerned. Of the four children who got the closest look at “Life With Grandpa,” including Ricky, Davida, and Merry Berg, Techi was the only one who has remained loyal to The Family. In 1987, the year before The Family says it instituted a firm policy against child molestation, The Family produced a comic book for children, entitled “Heaven's Children,” in which David Berg fantasizes about having sex with Techi as a young teenage girl.
Techi herself gave birth to a son, Trevor, when she was just sixteen years old. Several former members close to the Unit said the child was fathered by an older Swiss devotee who has since left The Family. Techi herself vigorously denied that claim in an e-mail in January 2005: “I am married to my husband of nearly ten years, and my nine-year-old son is his,” she wrote. “I am a grown woman living my own life. I think it's childish to even bring up things like this, which can serve no good purpose and only cause pain.”
3
Those making the allegation, including Don Irwin, say the issue is important because it shows that there was still sexual activity between adults and underage girls in the inner circle of The Family well into the nineties.
“Techi arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia [from Portugal] pregnant with a child,” Don Irwin said. “The cult leadership lied to their membership saying that she got pregnant from a teenage boy in Vancouver. That was not what happened.”
Irwin said he knows the real father of Trevor. On top of that, Irwin said that his own father, Ralph Keeler Irwin, legally changed his name to “Robert William Zerby” to make it easier for him to bring the pregnant Techi back to Canada.
“They encouraged the boys in that location [Vancouver] to have sex with her immediately upon her arrival. Trevor was born very quickly after and not a full nine months after her arrival.”
Irwin also said Techi told him that she thought “there was nothing wrong” with “a fourteen-year-old having sex with adult men.”
“Having the child made Techi dependent on the group,” Irwin said. “She is not allowed to travel alone with the child. When she visits relatives, the child does not come with her. That is how they control her.”
Techi declined to be interviewed for this book. But in the aftermath of Sue's slaying and Ricky's suicide, she issued a prepared statement through The Family International. Watching the angry video her brother made before killing Sue Kauten and himself, Techi said, “made me physically sick to my stomach.”
It was unbearable to hear the way he talked about my mother, and her husband, Peterâtwo of the most wonderful people on Earth, I think. Our mother! Our mother who loved us so deeply, who showed us that love at every possible opportunity, who did her best to make sure we had the best upbringing she could provide for us. It's so horrible. And, I imagine, even more horrible for her to have to listen to it. So sad. Such unbelievable hatred, darkness and evil came out of his mouth.
We were close, and I know that when I knew him, he never ever felt any of the things he stated in his video. After Ricky left The Family, it's not like Mom stopped loving him, either, and she did all that she could to try to show him that. I don't understand why he refused to believe her. And for the record, I was never once in all my life in The Family abused.
Techi's statement, issued January 28, 2005, says Ricky “had no reason to think that either I or my son needed to be ârescued.'
“In closing, I would like to say that I loved my brother. I love him now, and I forgive him, and I know that God loves him and forgives him, and that I will see him again some day in a much better place.”
Zerby, Amsterdam, and Techi were not the only current members of The Family to enter the media fray following Sue's slaying and Ricky's suicide. Borowik complained that early news reports only quoted a few alienated second-generation members who had left the movement and ignored the voices of the majority of second-generation adults who loved The Family and were still members.