MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Temple of Death (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: June 20, 2022

On the morning of August 10th, 1991, in a little rural town in Arizona, two women walked across a parking lot toward a Buddhist temple. They were there to prepare a meal for the monks who lived inside. As they walked, the women noticed that none of the monks were outside meditating or gardening, which was strange. And, when they reached the front door, not only was it locked, which was strange, but also, there was also this huge puddle of water forming in front of it which they just couldn't understand. The women sensed something was off, but they shrugged and left the front door, and found an open door on the side of the building and went inside. Minutes later, those women would come running back out, hysterical, screaming for help.For 100s more stories like this one, check out my YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @MrBallenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On the morning of August 10th, 1991, in a little rural town in Arizona, two women walked across a parking lot toward a Buddhist temple. They were there to prepare a meal for the monks who lived inside. As they walked, the women noticed that none of the monks were outside meditating or gardening, which was strange. And when they reached the front door, not only was it locked, which was strange, there was also this huge puddle of water forming in front of it, which they just couldn't understand. The women sensed something was off, but they shrugged and left the front door and found an open door on the side of the building and went inside. Minutes later, those women would come running back outside, hysterical, screaming for help. This story includes graphic descriptions of violence.

As such, listener discretion is advised. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious Delivered in Story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So, if that's of interest to you, please make toast at the five-star review buttons house, but scrape all of your excess butter with all the crumbs in

it back into their butter container. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Boland podcast wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. I'm Peter Frankopan. And I'm Afua Hirsch. And we're here to tell you about our new season of Legacy, covering the iconic, troubled musical genius that was Nina Simone. Full disclosure, this is a big one for me. Nina Simone, one of my favourite artists of all time. Somebody who's had a huge impact on me, who I think objectively stands apart for the level of her talent,

the audacity of her message. If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message, it totally floored me. And the truth and pain and messiness of her struggle, that's all captured in unforgettable music that has stood the test of time. Think that's fair, Peter?

I mean, the way in which her music comes across is so powerful, no matter what song it is. So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone. Hello, I'm Emily, and I'm one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And they don't get much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy. OK, maybe that's a stretch, but if I say pop star and shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about. No? Short shorts? Free cocktails? Careless whispers? OK, last one. It's not Andrew Ridgely.

Yep, that's right. It's Stone Cold icon George Michael. From teen pop sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet, join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom. From the outside, it looks like he has it all. But behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil. George is trapped in a lie of his own making with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts or listen early and ad free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. OK, let's get into today's story.

Early on the morning of Friday, August 9th, 1991, in a small town in south-central Arizona, a man stepped out of his home and stood quietly on the doorstep. His face turned to the east, where the sun was just starting to show above the horizon. Even though he had gotten up early so he could get some gardening in before the real heat of the day set in, now that he was actually outside, he showed absolutely no sign of hurrying. His unlined face and dark eyes were serene as he watched the first rays of light spreading over the desert that bordered one side of the property where he lived and the cotton fields that bordered the other side. Once the sun was up, the man stood with his eyes closed, still as a statue, for several more minutes, taking in the sounds of the world waking up around him. He could hear the hum of insects, along with birds cooing and scratching in the dirt for seeds. He was also aware of the steady rhythm of his own breathing and the movement of a very slight breeze through the branches of the

nearby cottonwood trees he had planted two years ago. For 36-year-old Buddhist monk Paroosh Kanthong, these early morning hours that he could spend alone in his garden were often the most peaceful and reflective part of his day. Now, opening his eyes, Paroosh turned his attention to the narrow path along the side of the single-story white stucco building with the red roof that he and five other monks called home. When Purush had first arrived in Arizona from his native Thailand eight years ago, he had led a small Buddhist community in the state capital of Phoenix. But back in 1985, after the community had scraped together enough money to buy these five acres of rural farmland located 20 miles west of Phoenix, Paroosh had worked tirelessly to collect

the money that allowed them to build this modest temple, which was called Wat Pramkunaram. Since opening its doors two years ago, the temple had become an important site of worship for the 1300 members of Arizona's scattered Thai Buddhist community. And as the abbot of the temple, an abbot is the leader of a monastery, Purush oversaw not only the services, classes, and festivals that the temple offered its worshippers, but he also oversaw the training and education of the five monks and three novices and temple helpers who currently lived there. Stepping away from the door he had been standing in that led back into the temple's dining room, kitchen, and simple bedrooms, Paroosh adjusted his bright saffron orange robe and began walking along the narrow path that ran the length of the temple. He listened

to the gentle slap of his sandals as he slowly walked past the eggplant, basil, lemongrass, and mint that he had planted alongside the mango, banana, pomegranate, and loquat trees. Coming to a stop near the end of the path, Paroosh knelt down in front of one of the many little shrines that dotted the garden. As he knelt, he picked up a handful of dry soil and let it run through his fingers. Back in Thailand, August was the wettest month of the year when rice farmers could expect 19 inches of rain. And until his move to Arizona at the age of 28, Perush marked his country's rainy season by staying indoors, so there was no chance that he and his fellow monks might accidentally step on and damage

any of the rice seedlings growing in the nearby paddies. But out here in the Arizona desert, things were totally different. Water was scarce, and so it was a very precious commodity. If your property met certain minimum size requirements, you could sign up for a weekly water distribution that was delivered to each property through an irrigation system of pipes and gates. While the Temple property was too small to qualify for this water allotment, Paroosh had worked out an agreement with his neighbor, Betty Craft, whose property also failed on its own to meet the minimum size requirements,

but together, their two properties were big enough to sign up for a weekly water distribution, and so they did that, and Paroosh and Betty shared the water between them. He grinned as he thought of Betty. She loved gardening as much as he did. He'd see her that night, since Friday was the night that the town posted the weekly water distribution schedule. He knew Betty always worried that he might forget to close the headgate on the temple's property, which prevented their shared water allotment from flowing through to the next property along the irrigation line. And so, on whatever day they were scheduled to get their water, Betty almost always called Paroosh just to make sure that he had adjusted the headgate and opened his hoses so they wouldn't waste or lose

even a single drop of their shared water. That was good though. Paroosh always enjoyed comparing notes with Betty and he would find out this evening how her fig trees were doing. Maybe that was something he should add next year to the gardens at the temple. Collecting a handful of basil and lemongrass, Purush felt the air growing hotter, and he knew that soon he would hear the sounds of activity inside the monastery as the monks began their morning routine of meditation and work around the temple grounds. monks began their morning routine of meditation and work around the temple grounds. As he enjoyed his last few minutes of solitude, Purush was again thankful for the temple's remote location. In Thailand, practically the entire population was Buddhist, but in Arizona, the sight of Thai monks in their bright orange robes with their shaved heads was unusual, and it had drawn a lot

of public attention and curiosity at the temple in Phoenix. But here, out in Waddell, the temple's location was so far away from the center of town that many of the town's 1,500 residents didn't even know it existed. And those who did, like Betty, they had come to welcome the sight of the monks in their orange robes quietly going about their business. And so, Purush and the other monks and time members of the temple were all basically left alone to meditate and practice their religion. At the core of their religion, Buddhism is the belief that human life is one of suffering and the only way to achieve enlightenment or nirvana is through meditation, spiritual and

physical labor, and good behavior. Buddhists also believe in reincarnation, that you are reborn again and again after death until you reach that final state of enlightenment and you are released from suffering. Buddhist monks play a key role in the religion by living a very simple life that allows them to meditate not only on their own path to enlightenment and acceptance of the present moment, but on enlightenment, peace, and non-violence for all people. By 11 a.m., the temperature outside had reached 101 degrees Fahrenheit, and not even the cottonwood trees could shade Purush from the heat. Soon, it would be time for the monks to eat their single meal of the day. It would be made and served at the temple by a member of the community whose gift of time and

food would count as service merits along the path to enlightenment. After lunch, Purush would check in with the temple's newest resident, a 75-year-old nun from Thailand who had moved into the temple just three weeks earlier. Visiting her was her 17-year-old grandson and novice monk, an American high school student named Matthew. Paroosh stood up and brushed the dirt from his knees and robes, and then he turned and walked back down the path to the side entrance of the temple that he had been standing in earlier. Before stepping back inside, he took off his sandals, and he enjoyed the smell of cooking rice wafting out from the kitchen. Once inside, Paroosh closed the door behind him, and then he stood there quietly for a moment.

He let go of all the noise he was hearing both inside and outside of his mind, then he opened his eyes and stepped into the nearby kitchen, and he left his handful of freshly picked herbs on the counter. At 8.30 a.m the next day Saturday August 10th Betty craft called the temple at the local well last night she and perush had seen that their water distribution was scheduled for that day the 10th but that morning Betty had found out that the distribution was going to start a bit earlier than usual so she was calling perush to let him know, and she wanted to remind him, again, to make sure the temple's water head gate was closed. But after dialing the

number to the temple, the phone didn't ring, it was just silent. Betty didn't know why this was, and after trying again and still getting nothing, she decided to just hop in her car and make the short drive over to the temple to tell Paroosh in person. A few minutes later, Betty drove through the open gates of the concrete wall that surrounded the temple's five-acre lot, and she pulled into the temple's parking area and parked her car. Getting out, she walked over to the side entrance that she knew led into the monks' living quarters. Once there, Betty quickly saw that the temple's hoses were open.

Water was running out of them. But it struck her as odd that Purush had not temple's hoses were open. Water was running out of them. But it struck her as odd that Paroosh had not arranged the hoses so that all the water would run into his gardens. Instead, some of the water had started to collect on the little patio right outside the door and was even overflowing into the parking lot down below. Betty felt even more puzzled when she knocked on the side door and didn't get an answer. The same thing happened when she walked around to the front entrance that led directly into the large square temple sanctuary where the monks conducted services. Not only did no one answer either door,

but everything inside the building seemed unusually quiet. But not wanting to enter the monk's space without an invitation, and checking once more that the grounds were empty, Betty shrugged her shoulders. At least she knew that the temple's hoses were on and the head gate was closed. So she jumped back into her car and returned to her own property. Two hours later, at 10.40 am, another car drove through the open gates of the temple into the front parking lot. Inside the car were two Thai women who were friends, and who were both gates of the temple into the front parking lot. Inside the car were two Thai women who were friends and who were both members of the temple. They were there to make

the monk's Saturday meal. When the car came to a stop, the two women looked around and noticed something strange. There was not a single person outside working in the vegetable gardens or walking on the meditation paths. The women figured there must be a reason for this, so they just got out and headed for the front door of the temple. But before they could reach the door, they had to walk around this large puddle of water that had formed in front of the temple from all of the water pouring out of the open hoses. The women wondered why the hoses had not been adjusted to aim in other directions, but ultimately they ignored the growing puddle, and one of the women reached out and grabbed the front door handle, but when she pulled it, she saw it was locked.

This was now the third irregularity that the two women had spotted in the span of just a couple of minutes. 51-year-old Chawi Borders and her friend, Primsat Hash, were starting to get a bad feeling about what they were seeing at the temple. Something just felt off. But they quickly reminded themselves that they needed to just focus on what they were doing at the temple, not what the monks might be doing. They were there to make lunch and earn service merits. And besides, the two women agreed that the monks must just be inside studying or meditating, and as for the water and locked door,

the monks must have just forgotten to turn off the irrigation system and open the front door to the sanctuary. So the two women left the front door and headed around to the unlocked side entrance. They took off their shoes outside and then stepped inside. The room they walked into was the dining room. To their left was a door that led to the kitchen. Straight in front of them was that large square temple worship area, and then to their right was a hallway that led down to five bedrooms that made up the monks' living quarters. The women turned left and went straight into the kitchen and got to work preparing the monks' lunch. But they hadn't been there for very long before Primshot thought she'd

discovered the reason for at least some of the irregularities they had witnessed that morning. discovered the reason for at least some of the irregularities they had witnessed that morning. As she had walked from the kitchen back toward the side entrance to go back outside and get something from the car, she had glanced quickly down the hallway that led to the monks' five bedrooms, and at the front of that hallway, close to where she was, was a small sitting area with a couple of sofas inside. And in this sitting area, Primshot saw the monks were lying quietly on the floor between these two sofas. After getting what she needed from the car, Primshot returned to the kitchen and told her friend, Chawi, that she had just seen the monks in the sitting area and that they were either sleeping or praying. Not wanting to disturb them,

the two women went about their meal preparation very quietly, and at some point, when Chawi thought she heard the faint ring of a phone, she immediately stepped out of the kitchen into the dining room to answer the phone before the sound could interrupt the monk's concentration or rest. But when she put the phone to her ear, she heard nothing. Thinking she must have picked up the wrong phone, as there was two phones in the dining room. She walked across the room to the other phone and put that phone to her ear, but this as well was silent. But as she stood there with the silent phone pressed to her ear, she looked at the first phone she had picked up and she could tell right away that the cord connecting the receiver to the phone had been cut. Then she pulled the phone in her hand away from her ear, and she saw the

same thing. The phone's cord was cut. As she realized that clearly she had not heard a phone ring because now she's seeing neither phone would work, Chawi just happened to glance at the sitting room at the front of the hallway where the monks were lying on the floor in various attitudes of prayer. And almost absently, she noticed that mixed among the colorful saffron robes that the monks wore was the long white shirt and pants worn by the elderly nun who had joined the monastery with her grandson just a few weeks ago. Chawi was suddenly very uneasy. She knew that could not possibly be right. It was absolutely forbidden that a male monk who took strict vows of celibacy would ever lie down next to a woman,

let alone lie close enough that their bodies or robes would be touching. As Chawi stood there frozen, her friend Primshot stepped out into the dining room as well and began to let out this terrible wail. Because something else was horribly wrong with what the two women were looking at. There was blood everywhere in the sitting area. There was blood on the floor, on the walls, and on the two sofas. Hello, I am Alice Levine and I am one of the hosts of Wondery's podcast British Scandal.

On our latest series, The Race to Ruin, we tell the story of a British man who took part in the first ever round the world sailing race. Good on him, I hear you say. But there is a problem, as there always is in this show. The man in question hadn't actually sailed before. Oh, and his boat wasn't seaworthy. Oh, and also tiny little detail, almost didn't mention it. He bet his family home on making it to the finish line. What ensued was one of the most complex cheating plots in British sporting history. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app.

In May of 1980, near Anaheim, California, Dorothy Jane Scott noticed her friend had an inflamed red wound on his arm and he seemed really unwell. So she wound up taking him to the hospital right away so he could get treatment. While Dorothy's friend waited for his prescription, Dorothy went to grab her car to pick him up at the exit. But she would never be seen alive again, leaving us to wonder, decades later, what really happened to Dorothy Jane Scott? From Wondery, Generation Y is a podcast that covers notable true crime cases like this one and so many more. Every week, hosts Aaron and Justin sit down to discuss a new case

covering every angle and theory, walking through the forensic evidence, and interviewing those close to the case to try and discover what really happened. And with over 450 episodes, there's a case for every true crime listener. Follow the Generation Y podcast on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. on music, or wherever you get your podcasts. It was 11.09am that Saturday morning when the emergency call came in to the dispatcher at the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department. Chawi and Primshot, who were totally hysterical, had run barefoot to the house of a neighbor who had called 911. By 11.21am, the first law enforcement officer had skidded to a stop in the temple parking lot, and three minutes later, four more officers had arrived.

By 11.45 a.m., the perimeter of the temple grounds had been marked off with yellow crime scene tape, and the parking lot was full of police and medical personnel. And the news had already spread like wildfire through the Buddhist community and among local, state, and national media. It was also making headlines back in Thailand, because the temple was now the site of the worst mass murder in Arizona history. Inside that small sitting room, police had found nine people, every single inhabitant of the temple, including the abbot, Paroosh, all of them dead. temple, including the abbot, Perush, all of them dead. Physical evidence at the scene did not paint a complete picture, but it did allow police to establish a few theories about what happened. There had been at least two killers. On the carpet near the victims were 17.22 caliber casings and

three spent shotgun shells. A nearby storage room had been sprayed with a fire extinguisher, shotgun shells. A nearby storage room had been sprayed with a fire extinguisher, and in the foam on the floor, police counted two different-sized sets of footprints made by people wearing combat-style boots. The small monastic cubicles where the monks slept had been ransacked and vandalized. The sleeping mats had been pulled off of the wooden bed frames, and what little furniture there was had been broken and knocked to the ground. Police were also able to determine that the killers had found the temple safe, but they had not been able to open it. What puzzled investigators was the fact that the temple's worship area, which was that large square room not far from the sitting area where the bodies had been found, appeared to be

untouched, despite the fact that in the worship area, right near the altar, was a visible money tree with at least 20 bills still clipped to the branches. So if this had been a robbery, why didn't the robbers take those bills? Whoever had committed the crime had also left another clue behind. Overlaying the stench of clotting blood, spent ammunition, and human flesh that had already begun to decompose, there was also the smell of something else that was completely out of place in a Buddhist monastery, the stale but strong scent of cigarette smoke. Even as the first responders to the crime scene went about their grisly work of photographing the dead and collecting evidence,

the sheriff of Maricopa County, 55-year-old Tom Agnos, knew his department was in way over its head trying to deal with a mass murder. So he immediately began the process of pulling together a multi-agency task force to help investigate the crime, process the crime scene, and collect and analyze any forensic evidence. But before the police could even write up their preliminary crime scene report, and just hours after the bodies had been discovered, along with the media, hundreds of members of the Asian community in and around Phoenix were gathering outside the temple wall. In the 101 degree Fahrenheit heat, reporters had already begun to broadcast and air interviews putting forward wildly different and competing

theories about possible motives for the killings. Some reports speculated that the murders were a robbery or a hate crime directed at the Asian and Buddhist communities. Others speculated that the killings were gang-related or drug-related, that maybe the temple itself or some of the monks or temple residents had direct connections to the growing trade in heroin coming out of Thailand into the United States. Meanwhile, based on their discussions with Betty Craft, who had met with Paroosh at the local well in Waddell at 9.30pm on the night of August 9th, along with findings from the medical examiner's office, the investigators were able to narrow down the time of the murders to between 2 and 4 a.m. on the morning of August 10th. But despite all the evidence of violence and destruction left at the crime scene,

by August 12th, two days after the mass murder, the best lead that investigators had was just a report of a red SUV, a Ford Bronco with a white stripe that had been seen by several different witnesses driving away from the area where the temple was located around the time that the murders were likely to have been committed. Over the next few weeks, more than 60 law enforcement personnel would follow up on more than 500 leads, including that report of the red Ford Bronco, but none of those leads would pan out. Officers dug into the private lives of the nine victims, but they just could not come up with any person or group who might have wanted one of them or all of them dead. Members of the Asian community had raised a $10,000 reward for

information leading to the killers, but no one had come forward with anything useful. But almost exactly one month after the murders, the task force would receive what they believed was their first real break in the case. On Monday, September 10th, police in Tucson, Arizona, called the special task force headquarters in Phoenix, saying they had just gotten a tip related to the mass murder. The tip had come in that morning from a 24-year-old patient at the Tucson Psychiatric Institute who had checked himself into the facility after attempting suicide.

The patient, who gave police several false names before giving them his real name, Michael Lawrence McGraw, was known in his hometown neighborhood of South Tucson by yet another name, Crazy Mike. He told Tucson police that he had something to say about, quote, some kind of murders that happened in Phoenix at the Buddhist temple. As soon as they got this tip, investigators drove to Tucson and went through the administrative process of getting Mike released from the psychiatric hospital so they could drive him back to Phoenix for questioning. Once that was done and Crazy Mike was in Phoenix, investigators at the task force headquarters spent the next three days questioning

him during interrogations that sometimes lasted longer than 12 hours at a stretch. Between sessions, Mike was taken to a four-star Sheridan hotel and treated to room service, but he was never allowed to sleep for more than a few hours at a stretch, and he did not have a lawyer with him for the interrogations. Eventually, Crazy Mike confessed to the Temple murders, although audio recordings of the interrogation showed that Mike needed and got a lot of help from his interrogators before he actually got the details of the crime straight. On September 13th, three days after Mike had been brought in for questioning, police had arrested four other men from Tucson that Mike had said were also involved in the killings.

All four of the accused were acquaintances of Mike, and all four were subjected to the same interrogation techniques that detectives had employed when they had questioned Mike. And three of the four men confessed to the murders and were immediately charged with multiple homicides. The fourth man had a solid alibi and just refused to yield to what the courts would later describe as questionable interrogation techniques by the task force. But by late September, the case against the so-called Tucson Four, which was Crazy Mike and the three other men who confessed, quickly fell apart. Each of the

suspects recanted their confessions, saying they were, quote, coerced by investigators who frightened them, gave them details about the case, and told them that their friends had already implicated them in the crime, end quote. Not only were investigators back to square one, but the botched interrogations of the Tucson Four had resulted in public outcry and criticism of the police and caused divisions inside of the task force, which now numbered more than 200 people. The real first break in the Waddell Temple Massacre would not come until October 24th, six weeks after the killings. And that break was actually based on a lead that the police had gotten one month earlier,

on September 21st, and had just failed to follow up on. It would turn out that on the same day that Crazy Mike phoned the Tucson Police Department on September 21st saying he had information about the murders, investigators for the Special Task Force had also received a tip from the Office of Special Investigations at the Luke Air Force Base. Luke Air Force Base is located about six miles east of the Waddell Temple. The Office of Special Investigations, which is the name of the military police unit that provides law enforcement on the base, had notified the task force that they had picked up a weapon from someone driving on base and the weapon matched the description of the one used in the Temple Massacre.

But in all the excitement of getting the phone tip from Crazy Mike at the psychiatric hospital and having a real live suspect to interrogate, task force detectives did not send this weapon in for testing. Instead, after picking the weapon up from Luke Air Force Base, one of the sergeants on the task force literally put the weapon behind a door in a corner of his office, and then he forgot about it until four weeks later when the case against the Tucson 4 started to implode. At that point, with the task force scrambling for new leads, the sergeant remembered the weapon and they would send it off for testing at the Arizona State Crime Lab. The results of that test came back four days later on October 24th, and two days after that,

on October 26th, investigators arrested two people in connection with the mass murder. And the story that these two people would tell police left even the most hardened detectives feeling shocked and repulsed. Based on the testimony of these two individuals, here is a reconstruction of what really happened in the early morning hours of Saturday, August 10th, inside the Waddell Temple. The last communication between the residents of the Waddell Temple and the outside world happened at about 11 p.m. on the night of Friday, August 9th. Paroosh, the abbot of the temple, had already come back from his meeting at the local well with neighbor Betty Craft. Other monks had also returned to the temple after performing a blessing

ceremony at the house of one of the temple members earlier that evening. At 11, one of the monks telephoned the woman who had prepared that day's noontime meal, asking if she would like to return to the temple the next day, Saturday, an offer she later told police she had declined. After 11 p.m., finished with their daily routine of meditation, prayer, work, and teaching, four of the temple's residents made their way to the small sitting room to talk and watch TV. The temple's gentle 75-year-old nun, who had spent most of her life in Thailand doing the back-breaking work of planting and harvesting rice, had made her way to her tiny sleeping

quarters, less a bedroom than a closet, that had just enough space inside for a simple sleeping mat, but which gave her the required physical separation from the monks. But just as the evening was coming to a close for the residents of the temple, the night was just getting started for two local teenage boys, one 16 years old and one 17 years old. This was a night, in fact, that had been a long time in the making. Three months earlier, one of the teen's brothers had told them that the Waddell Temple was full of riches like golden Buddha statues and a safe full of money. And this brother would know because he had actually spent six weeks that summer living in the temple as a novice monk. And so the 16-year-old and the

17-year-old became obsessed with this temple and these riches. But as they thought more and more about robbing the temple, they realized they weren't just interested in the money. They were also interested in treating this robbery like it was a full-scale military operation. And they both agreed that for this military operation to be successful, they would have to pull it off without leaving any witnesses. So back in June of 1991, while Paroosh and his fellow monks were out in the temple gardens just starting to plant melons, basil, corn, and sweet potatoes, the two teens started preparing for their robbery-sl robbery slash war game.

Both of the boys had fathers who worked at the nearby Luke Air Force Base, so the boys went to the base store and over a period of time bought the gear they needed. Boots, camouflage hats, scarves, military belts and goggles, battle harnesses, and military knives and flashlights. Getting the weapons wasn't hard either. The 16-year-old boy had access to his father's 20-gauge pump-action shotgun that he loaded up with birdshot. When you fire birdshot, it's like firing a cluster of small metal BBs all at once. And the 17-year-old would borrow a.22-caliber rifle from an unsuspecting acquaintance.

By late summer, after weeks of talk and planning, the two teen boys had settled on a date. They'd arrive at the temple late on the night of Friday, August 9th, when they knew all the monks would be inside the temple. So, just before midnight, on that Friday night, the two boys, dressed in their full military outfits and driving an older model Mustang, turned off the car headlights as they rolled through the open gates of the temple and parked the car in the far corner of the parking lot. The boys pulled on their gloves and then checked to make sure their guns were loaded and that all the gear they would need was either hooked onto their bodies or in their respective

duffel bags. Then, after nodding to one another, they put their big goggles over their eyes, pulled their hats down tight over their foreheads, and pulled their scarves up around their nose and mouths. Then they got out of the car and began walking toward the side door of the temple that led into the dining room. Just after midnight on August 10th, the quiet inside the temple was suddenly shattered. The four monks in the sitting area heard a bang as the side door was suddenly flung open, and a moment later, two people dressed in military gear were dragging them out of their seats. The air was filled with shouts, hit the dirt, down on the floor, now, now, now! As the monks stumbled first to their feet and then to their knees, they stared in shock at

these intruders who seemed to have just come out of nowhere. It was impossible to see the boys' faces, but the monks saw that one of the attackers was over six feet tall and must have weighed over 200 pounds. Up close, both of the boys smelled like beer, cigarettes, and sweat. But the monks hardly had time to process any of this before the intruders split up, one of them screaming and waving a long barreled gun as he circled the four monks who were now kneeling on the floor in the six foot wide space between the two person and six person sofas on opposite sides of the sitting area meanwhile the other intruder ran down that narrow hallway leading to the temple's five bedrooms where he dragged the remaining two monks one novice monk, and the temple helper,

back to the sitting room, where they also were forced at gunpoint to join the circle of monks in the cramped space between the sofas. It was obvious after one look in the monks' bare, empty bedrooms that this temple was not full of riches like the boys had hoped. But that didn't stop the two boys from taking turns vandalizing, smashing, and destroying everything in front of them. And when one of the boys pulled open the door of the final room at the end of the hallway, which was really just a large closet, cowering on her knees right in front of him was the temple's oldest resident, the tiny 75-year-old nun and grandmother who had only arrived at the temple three weeks earlier with her 17-year-old nun and grandmother who had only arrived at the temple three weeks earlier

with her 17-year-old grandson. Grabbing hold of her white shirt dress, the intruder dragged her back to the sitting area and then forced her to take her place amongst the others. After an hour spent ransacking the living quarters and temple office, the only treasure the two boys had found was a safe that they could not figure out how to open, and some envelopes of cash offerings from members of the temple. So, frustrated, the two boys would spend their second hour in the temple, switching back and forth between terrorism and more destruction. Taking turns, they circled their kneeling captives,

stepping on their legs and backs, prodding them with the barrels of the rifle and the shotgun, and jumping on and off the seats of the sofa as they made their way around and around, demanding the combination to the safe and the location of any hidden valuables they were sure the monks must have somewhere. And as they tortured and degraded the nine people in front of them, the boys smoked one cigarette after another, blowing the smoke into their captives' faces and crushing out the butt of each cigarette in a big glass ashtray that they had placed in the center of their human circle. But from the very first moment that the boys had broken into the temple, the response from the monks totally threw them off. These were not people who wanted to fight or argue

or beg or even resist. Instead, the more violent and threatening the boys became, the less of a reaction they got from their victims. Instead, the monks looked around the circle and calmly made faces of encouragement at the terrified novice monk and the temple helper who just went by the simple name of boy and the 75-year-old nun. At some point, Purush laced his fingers together in prayer and began to chant. The other five monks, who, like him, had spent years learning to accept, without question or resistance, every moment and circumstance in their lives, joined him. In Buddhism, one of the greatest meditations of all is the meditation on the inevitability of death. And as Purush looked from face to face around the circle, he wanted each one of them to know that however and whenever

death came, it would bring the gift of rebirth and enlightenment. So even as the intruders physically and verbally assaulted them, trying to get them to not only give up the code to the safe, but to react to their captors with fear, Purush and the other monks just continued to mentally withdraw into the calm space of their meditation and prayer. And their strength appeared to give the other non-monks the resolve they needed to relax and be calm as well. And before long, the 17-year-old novice monk, the temple worker they called boy, and the 75-year-old nun had all bowed their heads as well and closed their eyes. The figure of the two boys finally lifted the barrel of his shotgun and fired four rounds into the circle of kneeling figures, blowing off kneecaps and fingers and sending birdshot into the soft skin of necks and faces, his victims had already left the world of flesh and blood behind.

As the victims silently absorbed the blasts from the shotgun, the second intruder walked up behind one of the victims, he raised his rifle and he fired two shots into the back of their head. As the victims slumped forward with their hands still laced together in front of their chest in prayer, the other eight victims didn't make a sound. They just continued to pray and meditate, knowing they were next. For the next several minutes, the second attacker slowly made his way around the circle, systematically putting at least two rounds into the back of each of the victim's skulls. After making sure that all nine people inside the temple were dead,

the two intruders packed up the money and personal items they had stolen from the temple and headed back out the side door. They ran back to their car, pulling the scarves down from their sweat-soaked faces, and began gulping in the hot, dry, and clean desert air. And then they drove out through the open gates of the Buddhist temple and back into their everyday normal lives. Except that 12 days later, on August 21st, military police on Luke Air Force Base found a.22 caliber rifle in the trunk of a car they had pulled over for suspicious activity. The rifle belonged to the driver who had just recently loaned the weapon to the passenger with him in the car, a 17-year-old teenager named Jonathan Doody. It wasn't until one month later,

September 20th, that the police report describing the traffic stop and the weapon would find its way to the task force investigating the mass murder, and it would be four weeks after that before members of the task force would finally get around to having that weapon tested and find that it was the murder weapon used in the Temple Massacre. Once those results came back in, it would take two days for task force investigators to track the rifle back to 17-year-old Jonathan Doody and to his accomplice, a 16-year-old named Alex Garcia, who was 6 foot 3 inches tall and who weighed 220 pounds. Alex was the first to confess to the murders, saying that Jonathan was both the mastermind of the robbery and the one who walked around the ring of victims and shot them all in the head, execution style. It was also Jonathan Doody's half-brother, who had spent time as a novice monk living in the temple that summer, who had said there were riches inside of the temple.

When the boys were asked why they committed this horrible crime, Jonathan told police he just wanted to get money to buy a car, and Alex told police he wanted quote, walk-around money that would impress the girls. As for why they had killed everyone, they said they were just following their plan to not leave any witnesses behind. Although, despite claiming to have this well-thought-out military-style robbery all planned out going into the temple, it was fairly obvious that once the boys actually got inside, violence and destruction became the focus, not the robbery. This is likely why the boys did not take that money that was just sitting in plain sight near the altar in the

worship room. At the end of the attack, Jonathan and Alex had left the temple with just under $2,800, of the attack, Jonathan and Alex had left the temple with just under $2,800, two stereos, six cheap cameras, a low-end video recorder, a pair of binoculars, and a handheld bullhorn. In addition to their confessions, forensic analysis of the shoe prints and the saliva left on the cigarette butts found at the temple also conclusively linked the boys to the killing and the crime scene. After three different trials, both teenagers were finally convicted of multiple counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. The Tucson Four, who were falsely accused and arrested for the murders, were released from jail on November 2nd after Jonathan and Alex said that no one, aside from themselves,

was involved in the temple murders and robbery. In 1994, Maricopa County paid the Tucson Four $2.8 million in damages for false arrests and defamation. Within weeks of the mass murders, the Waddell Temple reopened under the leadership of Abbot Winai Booncham, a Thai monk who had been longtime friends with Purush. Booncham said that after he had taken his friend's body back to Thailand to be cremated, Purush started appearing to Booncham in his dreams. And even though the temple did not reopen as a living and study space for monks until after serious security measures were put in place, Booncham moved into the temple immediately after

the murders. When asked why he did that, Booncham said that he saw his friend, Paroosh, everywhere in the temple, and so he was not afraid. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. If you got something out of this episode and you haven't done this already, please make toast at the 5-star review buttons house, but scrape all of your excess butter with all the crumbs in it back into their butter container. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Ballin Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Google, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. This podcast airs every Monday and Thursday morning, but in the meantime, you can always watch one of the hundreds of stories I have posted on my YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. If you want to get in touch with me, please follow me on any major social media platform and then send me a direct message. My username on every platform is just at Mr. Ballin, and I really do read the majority of

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