Every Town - Prescott Valley, AZ - Scientologist Murderer Documentary, Kenneth Wayne Thompson

Episode Date: December 3, 2021

The Church of Scientology has been plagued with controversies through the decades, including its stance against psychiatry. This became a bone of contention in the double murder case against Kenneth Wayne Thompson in 2012, in Prescott Valley, Arizona with the defense team hoping that religion would spare Kenneth from capital punishment. But they failed. Let’s revisit the life of Kenneth Wayne Thompson, and know the circumstances that led him to commit an abominable act.💥 Watch the The Video of This Epsiodehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiE86yS_VM7qjiICqRPmwLQ💥 Videos way too Creepy for Youtubehttps://www.patreon.com/scarymysteries  Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Everytown has a dark. Today we had to press Scott Valley in Arizona, where we check out Scientologist murderer Kenneth Wayne Thompson. How can a bloody double murder be justified by one's religious beliefs? Can it be a full-proof defense to save someone from the serious legal repercussions of committing a heinous crime? In 2012, a disconcerting double homicide was committed by Kenneth Thompson, a longtime believer in the teachings of the Church of Scientology.

He killed his sister-in-law and her fiancé in Prescott Valley, Arizona, which was driven by his religious convictions, according to his defense. In the end, though, Kenneth's religion didn't help him attain redemption, as he was found guilty on all charges. Hi, we are tuned in to another interesting episode of Everytown, and I'm your host, Andrew Fitzgerald. The Church of Scientology has been played with controversies through the decades, including its stance against psychiatry.

This became a bone of contention in the double murder case against Kenneth Wayne Thompson in 2012, with a defense team hoping that religion would spare Kenneth from capital punishment. But they failed. So let's revisit the life of Kenneth Thompson and know the circumstances that led him to commit, an abominable act. It wasn't by accident or by whim that Kenneth Wayne Thompson became a Scientologist. It was through his second stepfather that he and his mother joined the Church of Scientology that was incorporated in 1953 by author Elron Hubbard and his wife Mary Sue in Camden, New Jersey. Kenneth himself was born in 1983, spent his childhood between Missouri and Alaska.

According to relatives, he was only two years old when his father abandoned him and his mother. This perhaps brought trauma to young Kenneth and delayed his ability to speak, which he was eventually able to do when he turned four. His mom worked as a bookkeeper at a construction firm and single-handedly raised her son. Then she met a man named Craig, and they lived together, although they didn't marry, when Kenneth was seven years old in 1990, he and his mother and stepfather moved to Wasilla, a city in Alaska. It was a tough year for Kenneth who experienced difficulty keeping up in school. He also started hating Craig upon knowing how mean and abusive he actually was.

In the same year, Craig was involved in a drive-by shooting in Anchorage, Alaska, which landed him in jail. It was compounded when he got involved in sending a mail. mail bomb intended for his friend George who ratted him out. Instead, it was George's parents who got hit and died. For that, Greg was sentenced to an additional 22 years in jail, leaving Kenneth's mother alone once again. Soon she met a biker and practicing Scientologist, a man named William, aka Bill Tillery, at a Scientology mission in Anchorage where she had worked. They got married and Kenneth's mother soon converted to Scientology. She ultimately became president of the Anchorage Scientology mission,

while Craig was its director. They were dedicated serious church members, and before Kenneth turned 10, he was subjected to Scientology's auditing. Just what exactly is this ritual? Well, auditing is one of Scientology's practices, which involves regular one-on-one meetings with a counselor to talk through emotional and mental problems.

Kenneth and his mom went to regular auditing while she took Scientology courses. When his public school wanted to get him tested to find out what was holding him back, Kenneth's mother and second stepfather completely freaked out. So they decided to pull out the boy and have him be homeschooled with Scientology materials instead.

His mother assigned him to watch videos and perform training routes. teens that taught him to have a flat effect and exhibit zero emotion in the Scientology way. Eventually, still at a young age, Kenneth absorbed the Scientology mindset, but there was one person who was unhappy about it, and that was Kenneth's maternal grandmother, Eva Harvey. She later remembered her grandson's experience of Scientology different and said, I don't think he was really into it at all. We were Baptist when he was little.

He always went to church with us, and he was a Baptist. He had the belief in God, but I'm not sure about all the Scientology stuff they teach him. Eva had fond memories of Kenneth, though. Despite being awkward due to having Asperger's syndrome, Kenneth was the best little kid, according to his grandma. She further said, we loved him dearly. was always good, never had any problems with him. I would come home from work and he would be sitting there playing with Legos. He liked to go swimming.

I took him swimming. But as Kenneth and his mom got more deeply involved in Scientology, Eva and her grandson apparently grew apart. When Kenneth was in his early 20s, he then met Gloria Rhodes online. She was from Bisbee, Arizona, which was sort of like Wasilla, but in the desert, She later on moved to Alaska, where she crossed paths with Kenneth. And the circumstances in glorious personal life were quite complicated, especially those that involved her sister, Penelope Edwards, and her fiancé Troy Dunn.

The couple have been trying to start over with their life together. For more than a decade, Penelope had struggled with drug addiction and abusive parents while parenting two young kids. A young girl named Devin and a boy, let's call him Ben. In 2003, Devin, who was only five years old then, confessed that she had been molested by her stepfather. But Penelope didn't take any action. She just hit him and cried, Devin had said. Later, relatives, including Gloria, reported the incident to the local sheriff,

ultimately sending the stepfather to prison and landing Penelope with a charge for failure to report. Around that time period, Penelope also lost custody of her children who spent a year in state foster care. In 2004, Gloria became an instant mother of two when she took in Devin and Ben to live with her first in Arizona and then in Alaska. Both kids experienced trauma during their unstable early years, so Devin described their four-year stay with their Aunt Gloria as fraught.

Ben was later diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder, a condition which develops when children have no secure parental bond, and it makes them prone to angry and violent episodes. Devin disclosed that problems also stemmed from the terrible sibling relationship between Gloria and her mother Penelope. It seemed that their childhood rivalry had evolved into pure sibling hatred. Devin said, Gloria was the only sibling that my mom never talked to or about really. And every time Gloria talked about my mom, it was mean, hateful, and angry.

In the so-called Last Frontier, Gloria found bliss when she got to know Kenneth Thompson online. A boxy white man with reddish hair and a soul patch, Kenneth took Gloria out several times before he met her niece and nephew. For several months, Kenneth helped close. Gloria with Devin and Ben and Wasilla, and it was perhaps the best time of his life. It was inevitable that Kenneth and Gloria would soon be headed to the altar and exchanging their marital vows. As a married couple, they were active in running the Scientology mission in Anchorage, but Kenneth neither had the time nor money for training in order to move up the bridge to total freedom. It's a metaphor used by Scientologist,

to describe the advancement of its believers to a state of clear when they have freed themselves from the reactive mind. This takes place during auditing and is said to be a lifetime commitment. Despite not attaining this status, Ken still considered himself a Scientologist, for he had been one since he was a very little kid. His marriage with Gloria was doing well, but it was marred by an incident which was beyond their control,

and it later proved to be seriously disastrous. In the late 2000s, when Devin and Ben were ages 12 and 7 respectively, the state of Arizona ordered Gloria Thompson to return the two children to their biological mother, Penelope. Gloria and husband Kenneth were devastated. The kids didn't want to go, but they had no choice. After regaining custody of her kids, Penelope's family moved back to pre-establish. Prescott, Arizona. The mother of two had gotten clean at that point, rented an apartment, and started seeing a man

named Troy Dunn. Adjusting to a new chapter in their lives wasn't easy for the kids, especially for Devin, who spent her seventh grade year living with a family in a nearby town. When Devin returned, her mom Penelope had moved into a house with Troy. Devin recalled, For the first time in our whole entire lives, we had our own rooms, had our own bed that we got to pick out. We got to pick out all our own furniture. We had dinner like a family pretty much every night that we were all together.

Me, Troy, Mom, and Ben. Determined now to Ace Motherhood. Penelope took parenting classes at a local clinic. She attended therapy sessions with each of her kids and sought treatment for Ben. who still suffered from behavioral problems. Ben's treatment involved medication, periodic stays at a local respite home, and occasional trips to the mental health clinic at Phoenix Children's Hospital. Devinette observed that her mom improved in dealing with Ben so that he wouldn't hurt himself

or other people. On the other hand, though, things weren't going well with Kenneth and Gloria. When the kids left them, Massilla then felt like a prison. So, they headed for Donovan, Missouri, where Kenneth's maternal grandparents owned a large house. The Thompson couple lived there, and it was an arrangement that suited them well. They started to raise their own family by having two children themselves. Then, Kenneth experienced a devastating loss. His mother and second stepfather, William Tillery, were in a car accident in Alaska.

They were riding a motorcycle on a highway south of Anchorage, pulling a trailer for a camping weekend, when a Jeep traveling the other direction crossed over the center line and hit them head on. They died instantly. As a Scientologist, Kenneth knew their eternities were assured. They'd just pick up new bodies and then start over again. But deep inside, he was hurting as he loved his mother despite her messy entanglement with men. Then there were important concerns that Kenneth and Gloria had to deal with too. Although the state of Arizona prohibited Gloria from contacting Devin and Ben, she secretly did so,

and got information that made Kenneth utterly upset. Troy, Penelope's fiance, and her children weren't getting along well, and he really seemed to have it in for Ben. Then one day Devin called up her aunt Gloria and reported that the conflict between her nine year old brother and Troy had worsened. Thus, they decided to institutionalize Ben at the child's psychiatry unit of the Phoenix Children's Hospital. This enraged Kenneth, whose beliefs as a Scientology go against the practice of psychiatry and psychology. As a Scientologist since childhood, Kenneth was taught that psychology is evil and that any type of medication would cause more harm to the child and good. He thought that Ben was in danger and his eternity was threatened.

Kenneth was now bent on seeing Penelope to convince her that Ben was in a perilous situation. He wanted the mother to get the boy out of the psych ward and turn both kids over to him. On March 15, 2012, Kenneth Thompson told his wife Gloria and their two kids that he was taking a quick trip to Memphis, Tennessee. He lost his mother and second stepfather eight months prior, leaving him with a sum of money. He said the trip's purpose was to settle their estate. But after he left their house, Kenneth instead headed to the small mountain town of Prescott Valley, Arizona, where his sister-in-law, Penelope, and her fiancé Troy lived together. Before he started driving to Arizona from Missouri,

Kenneth withdrew $10,000, which he figured Penelope could take if she wanted it. as long as she took Ben out of the psychiatric ward. He also bought a hatchet and a knife. He then drove for 25 hours and arrived in Prescott, Arizona, on the morning of March 16th. Nothing much is known about what transpired that morning, but at 1 p.m., the house was ravaged by a fire. A neighbor from down the road could see the house burning,

so she called her son, Patrick a vet, an electrical contractor, and Troy's best friend. friend. She asked Patrick if he had heard from Troy and informed him his friend's house was on fire. By the time, Patrick reached Troy and Penelope's house after he was done with work, the street was barricaded off. Police and fire crews were everywhere, and Penelope and Troy had been dead for hours. They were found inside the house with their bodies showing signs that they had been bludgeoned and hacked to death. Acid had been poured over their bodies, and the house was then set fire. It was a terrible crime, but there was no trace of the person who did the evil act.

Around the time that Patrick arrived at the scene, an exciting scenario was unfolding some 90 miles east. Matt Bratz and Arizona Department of Public Safety Officer noticed a white Ford Taurus with Missouri plates on Interstate 40 near Flagstaff, Arizona. As the officer saw it, the driver of the Ford was acting visibly weird. He was, as the trooper later wrote in his report, staring straight ahead with both arms locked out and gripping the steering wheel. He began following the vehicle from the distance and eventually pulled him over. The man behind the wheel was, of course, Kenneth Thompson, and from the window of the vehicle, the trooper saw a red gas can and smelled solvent. It was also a backpack and some dirty rubber gloves. His kent.

canine unit caught wind of a substance and then began barking, although there wasn't any evidence of drugs. As the officer spoke to Kenneth, the latter's behavior grew increasingly anxious. He seemed jumpy, his hand shook, and his chest heaved. Without even being asked, Kenneth launched into a bizarre anecdote about visiting a wildlife park and observing a park ranger feed the wild animals with raw meat. Kenneth said some blood from the meat had splashed onto his pants, forcing him to change his clothes. The officer's drug-sniffing dog made a hit on the car, and the officer had Kenneth sit nearby while he searched it. In the backpack, he found a bloody hatchet with strands of human hair and a handgun.

There was also a bag with some grocery items and a receipt from a shop in Prescott Valley. The officer alerted the police in the area who told him, but they were investigating a gruesome murder scene. Kenneth was then arrested and handcuffed on the spot. As they waited by the side of the road, Kenneth asked the trooper if prisoners in Arizona could get conjugal visits. Kenneth was taken into custody and was later extradited to Yavapai County in Arizona.

A grand jury indicted Kenneth on 12 charges, including burglary, wrongful possession of a deadly weapon, arson and two counts of homicide for killing his sister-in-law Penelope and her fiancé Troy. But was there a way out for Kenneth? His team turned to Scientology as a defense against sending Kenneth Thompson to death row. That trial commenced in the last week of January of 2019. During the opening statements, Kenneth's defense attorney, Robert Gundacker, argued it's his client's devotion to the core beliefs of Scientology that set him on the path to commit the double murder. The lawyer's contention hinged on the fact that 9-year-old Ben was receiving psychiatric treatment.

Scientology has a long bitter opposition to psychiatry, as we've discussed. They see it as an industry that's brutal and rife with human rights violations. Defense lawyers claimed Kenneth was a practicing member of the religion whose opposition to mental health treatment led him to intervene on his nephew-in-law's behalf. They further claim that Kennett's training since childhood laid the groundwork for the murders he committed two decades later. To help illustrate their case the defense of pened court records from the church and invited expert witnesses like Leah Remini, Scientology blogger Tony Ortega, and a Canadian professor named Susan Raine, although only Professor Raine agreed to 10.

testify. In his attorney's version, Kenneth saw himself on a mission to rescue two children who were in danger under his sister-in-law's care. Gundacker emphasized one of the central tenants, and it was core to the whole wider system of beliefs, is that psychology is evil, probably the most evil on planet Earth. He also argued that once Kenneth arrived at Penelope and Troy's home in Prescott Valley, he killed them in a fit of passion rather than as the result of a pre-planned intent to kill. Thus the jury should return a verdict of manslaughter rather than murder in the first degree, which would require an element of premeditation. The Scientology defense, absurd as it may sound,

could be the only thing that would spare Kenneth from lethal injection. However, the Church of Scientology's position wasn't incongruent with Kenneth's defense, According to the church's spokesperson, Karen Powell, the answer to whether Kenneth Thompson was concerned about the welfare of his nephew and niece, and how that may have eventually manifested itself in murder is no way related to Scientology beliefs. There is no connection. No Scientology principles would have influenced those actions to occur. Nothing could be more opposed to our moral code.

Furthermore, prosecutors asserted that Kenneth's long drive to Prescott Valley, his purchases of a temporary cell phone, a new set of clothes, a hatchet and knife, as well as his decision to burn down the house, illustrated that he had planned to kill Penelope and Troy, then tried to cover it up. Before the start of the trial, the prosecution attempted to bar the Scientology defense, arguing there was no proof Kenneth continued to practice Scientology beyond his childhood. After hearing the presentations and arguments of the prosecution and the defense, the focus then shifted on the jury with a much-awaited verdict in Kenneth Thompson's case. On February 20, 2019, the efforts of the defense lawyers to persuade jurors that Kenneth's upbringing as a Scientologist helped rationalize why he bludgeon two people to death and set their bodies on fire proved futile. Before the jurors started their deliberation about Kenneth's sentence, the accused spoke to them,

saying that he showed up at the house aiming to bribe his sister-in-law to let him bring the children back with him to Missouri. I was going to try to buy happiness for these two children, he said. But his conversation with the parents soon turned violent. I can't say, I'm sorry they're dead. Penelope heard her children all the time. Troy also hurt the children. He was not a good guy. The jury deliberated less than two hours and they seemed unconvinced of Kenneth's story.

So, at the age of 35, Kenneth was found guilty of first-degree murder. Following the conviction, the jurors began deliberating on March 30th whether Kenneth should spend his life in prison or die by lethal injection. On April 3rd, the jury announced its verdict of a death penalty. for Kenneth Thompson. He is currently on death row at the Arizona State Prison Complex awaiting his execution. It has been said that religion saves lives, but it takes an exception when one commits a truly horrendous act.

So that's it for this week's episode of Everytown. Tune in next week for another episode filled with scary, strange, and mysterious stories. And who knows? Maybe your town's going to be next.