The Binge Cases: Scary Terri - Scary Terri | 4. Becoming Mrs. Hoffman

Episode Date: November 29, 2024

Terri didn’t just convince people to take their own lives. She was a cancer on whole families. The Hoffmans filed a wrongful death suit trying to hold her accountable. Binge all episodes of Scary Terri, ad-free today by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge Cases show page on Apple Podcasts and hit ‘subscribe’ or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access. The Binge – feed your true crime obsession.  Unwrap a huge holiday discount on NordVPN by heading to https://nordvpn.com/thebinge. Plus, with our link, you’ll get an extra 4 months free on the 2-year plan, and it’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee. Check the link in the description! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by NordVPN. This season you can give the gift of one-tap protection from hackers, trackers, and prying eyes across all your devices. NordVPN offers a powerful but easy way to protect your online privacy and access content without restrictions. A virtual private network, or VPN, is a service that protects your internet connection and privacy online. VPNs create an encrypted tunnel for your data, protect your online identity, and allow you to use public Wi-Fi hotspots safely. I find it perfect to watch my favorite thrillers, I love catching a Nordic noir, to use my devices safely when I'm traveling, and to find the best online deals. I love being able to unlock films and global content with a single click by switching

my virtual location in 111 countries, and it's the fastest VPN on the market with no annoying buffering. NordVPN, a must-have holiday safeguard offering privacy, freedom, and total control over your online experience. No mysteries or loose ends. I get enough of those in my Scandinavian thrillers. Unwrap a huge holiday discount on NordVPN by heading to nordvpn.com slash the binge. Plus, with our link, you'll get an extra four months free on the two-year plan, and it's risk-free with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee.

Check the link in the description. Listen to all episodes of Scary Terry ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page, or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Binge. Feed your true crime obsession. The Binge. Before we get started, I just want to let you know that this episode does discuss suicide. So please listen with care.

Alice Hoffman had seen and heard enough. And she knew where the bodies were buried. She heard Terry claim that Devereaux was possessed by the Black Lords just months before she died. She'd gone to the cabin that day and found Glenn Cooley dead of an overdose. Enough was enough. She was ready to leave Terry, even if her husband wasn't. He and Terry were very involved at that point,

and my mom was really unhappy. He would yell and scream at my mom a lot, and they said that they were going to get a divorce. Alice and Dawn would break up, but it wasn't a clean break. So this is the weird part. Basically, they said, we're getting a divorce, we're going to sell the house, and when we sell the house, we're going to move to Bedford, and we're going to live in an apartment until the house sells,

and then we're going to split the money and go our separate ways. And Janet was the only kid left in the house with them. We moved and at this point my brother had gone off to college. Janet said her mom started drinking more heavily during this time. Sharing space with her soon-to-be ex would upset her. She'd want to escape, go to the bar. And I'd be like, Mom, just stay at home. Just talk to me. And she wouldn't talk to us Don and Alice were going through so much at the time that

they couldn't really be there for their kids my brother and I just had all the freedom in the world there's really not much parental supervision at that point just because they were so involved in their emotional turmoil. Alice started seeing somebody else. And Don, he got consumed with CDBMS and with Terry. My dad had a pretty big ego, I feel like, and she fed his ego by having him be very involved in creating these instruments. Shields, swords, weapons to fight off black lords. We had a garage and he had a little workshop and he would like solder these like copper piping together and into these different shapes. And basically she had him convinced that he was help fighting the evil of the world.

That's like the ultimate to be a savior, you know? And she knew that's what he needed. But yet again, Terry was becoming a wedge, working things to her advantage. And I could see the separation between my parents because she was starting to favor him at that time and have him do all this stuff. And then my mom kind of started to take a step back. Jana didn't really know who to believe. It was unsettling.

Her mom left Terry's group while her dad doubled down on it. It was pretty much them living together in this fake life. And my dad was just hardly ever around. And then eventually they sold the house and then he moved into his own apartment. After that, the relationship was all but over. Just seeing the family break up was just a, it was just a tough thing for me at that time. And of course, I'm only 19 at this time. Rick said he felt like his parents never really came back from the death of their baby, Michael. Their grief was what drove them ultimately to Terry. And it seemed, Terry ultimately drove them apart. Terry made up stories about stuff mom had done that wasn't quite true. These stories

about her fooling around with other men, which I don't believe she ever did. The divorce moved along quickly after that. She had to sign some kind of waiver to approve it or something weird like that. Don needed the mother of his children to sign a waiver during their divorce proceedings. Because in Texas, during this time, an ex needed to sign a waiver expediting a divorce if their former partner wanted to enter into another marriage contract,

which is exactly what Don Hoffman wanted to do. And then the next thing you know, he and Terry are getting married. In sickness and in health, till death do us part. Well, till death do one of us part. From Sony Music Entertainment, this is Scary Terry. I'm Jonathan Hirsch. Chapter 4, Becoming Mrs. Hoffman. This is Scary Terry. I'm Jonathan Hirsch.

Chapter 4, Becoming Mrs. Hoffman. Hi, everyone. This is Jonathan Van Ness. Clean water, fresh air, our health. Electricity, honey. We tend to take for granted the things that matter most, like the separation of church and state. Americans United for Separation of Church and State has been on the front lines defending your freedom

to live and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Most folks don't see how church-state separation affects our daily lives until that freedom is gone. The separation between church and state covers many core freedoms like civil rights for LGBTQIA plus people, women, and racial slash religious minorities, or reproductive justice and freedom. But those rights are not a given. Every day,

Americans United works at the state and federal level to make sure these freedoms and more are protected for every American to enjoy and benefit from. They can't do this alone though. Join Americans United for separation of church and state and growing the movement because church-state separation protects everyone. Freedom without favor and equality without exception. Learn more and get involved at au.org slash curious. Hi everyone, this is Jonathan Van Ness. Clean water, fresh air, our health. Electricity,

honey. We tend to take for granted the things that matter most, like the separation of church and state. Americans United for Separation of Church and State has been on the front lines defending your freedom to live and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Most folks don't see how church-state separation affects our daily lives until that freedom is gone. The separation between church and state covers many core freedoms like civil rights for LGBTQIA plus people, women, and racial slash religious minorities,

or reproductive justice and freedom. But those rights are not a given. Every day, Americans United works at the state and federal level to make sure these freedoms and more are protected for every American to enjoy and benefit from. They can't do this alone, though. Join Americans United for separation of church and state

and growing the movement. Because church-state separation protects everyone. Freedom without favor and equality without exception. Learn more and get involved at's a chumminess. Taken out of context, they sound like two middle-aged ladies gossiping about their love life. At one point, Terry talks to Dolores about Dawn. time off to go up to Oklahoma, we would make love just all day long. She seemed to be bragging about their sexual connection in those phone calls.

The love that Don and I had and when we made love was just totally pure. Yes. I've never made love to anybody like I made love. I've never even made love to anybody before I married Don. With any of my husbands. After being with Don, I don't even consider what I had with him making love. It was so good. After Don, she would never want for another.

Terry made it seem to Dorothy like Dawn was her one true love. We would make love just all day long. Wow. We'd just take some cheese and chopped ham and eat pickles and cheese and chopped ham and maybe grapes or something. Uh-huh. Spend the whole day making love. And we'd do that twice, twice a weekend. Oh, boy. To each their own, but chopped ham, cheese, and pickles in the hot Oklahoma sun isn't my idea of a sexy getaway.

But it's clear from these conversations that Terry was quite enamored with Don, or at least wanted Dorothy to think so, much to the bafflement of Don's children. I remember the apartment he was living in, not too far from Terry, over there in Dallas, and remember him telling me that he had started dating her. Rick couldn't believe it. A spiritual teacher who wore muumuu's? I found that very interesting because, as I described before, Terry's, from a physical perspective, isn't the most attractive person. And I think I did question him. I'm like, you know, why Terry?

And it felt like he talked more about the need to help her, to help her with her businesses, to help her with the books. Don had a need to care for Terry, to help her and support her. He didn't make it seem like they were wildly in love. More like how you might care for a family member who's ailing. A mother. A divine mother, perhaps. He would spend a ton of time running her businesses,

whether it was making cassette tapes for some of the lessons, getting books printed, going and taking care of their properties. I went camping with him a couple of times up at Cripple Creek and then spending hours in the documents looking for mineral rights for the land that they owned and things like that. Don was less her lover than he was perhaps her servant, her devotee, a man who wouldn't question her. Unfortunately, my brother and I were in the wedding with her daughters because we didn't

know how to say no. You know, like that was our dad. Okay, you want to spend the wedding? I remember my dad making fun of me not shaving for the wedding. But yeah, I mean, it was the typical conscious development crowd and the usual suspects that were there. Terry was wearing, I think it was a light blue dress, as I recall. I remember some lady singing Amazing Grace.

And to this day, I cannot stand to hear that song because it reminds me so much of that day. We were concerned about my dad, that he would maybe be the next one to go. Seems like when Terry gets tired of her husbands, she convinces them to end their life. After that, like an explosion, shards of their lives together spun out in different life. After that, like an explosion, shards of their lives together

spun out in different directions. Alice would also get married again. Now, she ended up getting, you know, meeting a man pretty quickly and getting remarried pretty quickly. Then, their mother didn't really want to talk about CDBMS anymore. Janet moved out

and would eventually marry, too. Have a career and a family of her own. Rick seemed to be the one member of the family who stayed close to Don. Kept contact with Dad after he married his spiritual teacher. Rick showed up at the house one day

where Dawn lived with Terry and her daughters. She was like, oh, I guess you need to eat food, huh? So she's like, oh, okay, let me go round up some money. And so she went and rounded up like eight bucks or so and gave it to me and said,

here you go, go buy whatever you want. At first, Terry tried to make some effort to act like a stepmother. She got over that pretty quickly. That was about the only time when she was like, oh yeah, I guess you're now my stepson, so I guess I need to feed you, huh? Their marriage seemed like an afterthought. But because he was her stepson,

Rick got to see what Terry's private life was like. And what he saw wasn't always pretty. Terry was a hoarder, so their house was like a typical hoarder's where you had paths to work your way through the living room and into the other rooms. The table was full of crap, and there just wasn't a lot of

room in that house, as I recall. I think she had four or five storage units in the backyard that she stuffed full of stuff. It was just nutty. Her daughter, Virginia, lived at Terry's house with her boyfriend, John, in an extension. There was kind of a master bedroom that was built up over the garage. So she lived up there, and it had its own separate entrance that she could come and go. And she lived up there with her boyfriend, who mainly, from what I remember, sold pot. And I remember them smoking pot all the time up there.

You could smell it on that end of the house. Rick doesn't remember her having a job. I think they basically sold drugs to get the money that they had for it and stuff like that. So I remember one in this one. This is kind of a gross story, so you may have to cut it out of this podcast. But Terry used to do a lot of what she called energy work. It was basically massage therapy, and she had learned it over in India and everything else. And I remember her giving me a massage that was, I mean, I have to admit, she was very talented.

I just remember with John one time, we were sitting there watching TV or something like that and Terry offered to give him a massage and he's like okay yeah great and she goes alright we'll lose the pants and so off comes his pants and he's got a big brown spot on the back of his underwear

so like he'd shit himself I'm just like oh that's a little embarrassing, and he has no idea that he's done this. Terry wanted her followers to see her as an embodiment of Christ, a loving, psychic, spiritual mother, Terry G. But her living situation belied that image. Her home looked less like something you'd imagine gracing the halls of the afterlife, and more like something you'd see late night on reruns of Lifetime. She would portray herself as this very advanced spiritual guru. She knew all

the masters. She had all the information. But in real life, in living with her, you saw a whole different picture, right, of somebody who didn't have a lot of class, was very demanding on my dad, I remember, and pushed him hard to take care of things and manage her businesses and all that kind of stuff. Over the years, Janet and Rick saw their father grow tired, seemingly exhausted by the amount of things Terry demanded he do for her. By now, Terry had launched a variety of businesses for her jewelry, perfume business, massage business, counseling business. Terry kept a tightrope around him,

and we were worried that she was going to grow tired of him. Grow tired of having him around. Wouldn't be the first time. Not even the second. In 1988, Rick and his wife gave birth to their first child. Don came to visit them in the hospital, and he told his son that things had been tough lately. That him and Terry weren't getting along,

he was actually thinking about a divorce and things like that. I remember him point-blank saying that, which I found surprising because, well, they had only been married eight years, but he was pretty dedicated to her businesses and all those kinds of things, but I think he was starting to get fed up with just everything going on and people dying. Don told him he wanted out. Nothing about the conversation worried Rick, though.

Candidly, Rick didn't think it was such a bad idea. It was time to say goodbye and good riddance to Terry G. A few months later, Janet got a phone call from their mom, Alice. And she told me that he died and that he basically took his life because he was dying of cancer. And this is what they told her. He was dying of cancer and he did not want to be a burden to his family. So he killed himself in the hotel.

And I remember screaming, going, he didn't die of cancer, he didn't have cancer. You know, that's a bunch of bullshit. You know, I remember screaming that out going, oh great, so she's done it again. To be continued... Taste amazing, too. Wish I had a mouth. Take your morning into a delicious new direction with McDonald's new breakfast wraps. Add a small premium roast coffee for a dollar plus tax. At participating McDonald's restaurants. Infamous is celebrity gossip, but smart. It takes you deep into the stories that we just can't stop ourselves from following. From who Meghan Markle really is.

Apparently ambition is a terrible, terrible thing. To the scandal at Lululemon. You've got this man saying that his yoga pants don't work for women because they're too fat to wear them. We've got over 100 episodes ready for your binging pleasure. Listen to Infamous, the gossip show that's smart. I'm sorry to have to put you through this this way. I love you all very much, and you always hate to hurt the one you love. In the fall of 1988, Don recorded three messages on VHS.

One for Terry and her daughters, one for CDBMS, and one for his kids, Rick and Janet. I had a lot of trouble breathing up in Colorado this year. I went to the doctor when I got back, and he ran some tests and found that I had terminal non-operable cancer. I wasn't too thrilled about that announcement, so I went to a second doctor. He told me the same thing. So, just to be sure, I went to a third doctor. And he told me the same thing. One video goes on for 40 minutes. Don is in their bedroom at Terry's house in Dallas, sitting at the edge of the bed in a white and blue striped shirt unbuttoned in the front. It had always been a fear of Don's, his kids remembered, to waste away from a disease like cancer.

Dad worked at Bracken Ridge Hospital here in Austin when he was in college. And he would see when somebody got cancer, he made up his mind then, if he ever got cancer, then he would just take his life and get it over with. I've seen what chemotherapy does to people. It puts them through a lot of pain and a lot of suffering and a lot of agony. It seems like 95% of the time, they just suffer for another six months or a year and then die.

Don is withdrawn in the video, disassociated, at least to me. And perhaps that's how anyone might look on a video like this. I decided that I would not put all my loved ones through that kind of an ordeal. He also seems deliberate. Like he'd thought through all the possible reasons to take his life.

And this was, without question, the path. Resolute. He didn't want us to have to watch him pass away. But again, she made him feel like the hero. Oh, you're being a hero. First you're killing evil spirits. Now you're going to be a hero because now your family doesn't have to deal with you. And of course, she, that very first meeting, our very first call, she's, you know, telling us that, oh, he had cancer. Three different doctors had told him he had cancer.

It was inoperable. You know, and I'm thinking, oh, shit. He chose a Hilton hotel in Las Colinas, Texas. I'm sure you've heard of my death, and I'm sorry to have to put you through this this way. and I'm sorry to have to put you through this this way. The cause of death appeared to be a fatal cocktail of prescription medication, an overdose.

When the police showed up at Terry's home to notify her of Don's death, she said she didn't even know he had cancer. The police informed her of the drugs that were in Don's system. She said she knew he took pills, but made it seem like a doctor had prescribed them, not her. Don's autopsy no doubt revealed drugs in his system, but not what you might expect. The highest concentration of any scheduled substance in his body? MDMA. Ecstasy. So it was actually Terry that communicated that he had died to us. And I remember, again, also thinking, holy shit, I can't believe dad got sucked into the death ring as everybody else,

but it looks like he did. Ricky, you're going to have to be strong now. Don't keep all of your emotions bottled up inside. Take a cork off the bottle and let some of that stuff out. I'm very proud of both of you. You know what I'm saying? Janet, I'm sorry. I don't have any money to send you through school.

He'd left instructions for his children as well about his plans. I left everything in my will to Terry so that we could avoid paying estate taxes. Government takes a big chunk if they get a chance, so this way she won't have to pay any estate taxes. Like many people before him, Dawn left everything to Terry for reasons that still remain so unbelievable. After all these years of talking to people in her orbit, I can still hardly believe it.

The prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi goes something like, And it is in dying that you are born to eternal life. And I firmly believe that. That death is just a transition from one life to another life. And I'm not afraid of death. So I'm going to be in a much better place. For the first time in a long time, I won't be in any more pain. Well, I guess I'll wind could be around. In the physical, I'll be around. Only as a bonus.

But, I just wish I could be here to help you tonight. I won't be here, Elvin. Y'all love one another. We like knew right away what had happened. And so my brother pretended for like, you know, the first three days or first week. My brother went with Terry to the funeral home and helped make arrangements and stuff. And he also noticed how cold she was. She wasn't even upset. And how the guy at the funeral home asked what my dad did for a living. She just said, oh, he didn't work. And my brother's like, yeah, he did. He did all those

massages for people all day long, every day. So he made them put masseuse. And I remember he got so mad because she did that. And, you know, he just played it cool. Like, you know, I believe you. I'm going along with this just because this is just part of that process. But we will, you know, knowing full well that we were going to do something because this is just part of that process, but knowing full well that we were going to do something because this is not right. Jim Barclow, the attorney who repped Croom in contesting Sandra Cleaver's will, heard about what happened with Don. He reached out to my brother and introduced himself and said that he would like to represent us or whatever. and said that he would like to represent us or whatever.

In March of 89, Janet and Rick met with Jim. So we filed the wrongful death suit. The barrier to proof in a wrongful death suit is quite different than in a criminal case. You need to prove intent. And you need evidence of the act of murder, circumstantial or otherwise. The smoking gun, as they say. In a wrongful death suit, you need only prove that the defendant, Terry in this case, had directly or indirectly, whether intended or not, caused a person's death.

That didn't mean a conviction was guaranteed, but certainly the bar was lower. And these cases are also expensive. It's pretty common for parties to come to an out-of-court settlement rather than let a lengthy trial play out. Almost immediately, the Hoffmans began to compile evidence, recording phone calls and rooting around in her trash. My ex-husband David would go over there every day

and get their trash because it's not illegal. And he would go through the trash on our balcony in our apartment outside. They were in search of anything that would prove Terry had reason to coerce Dawn into taking his life and that she took steps to do so. I remember one time he found my dad's watch and a note that he had written to Terry telling her about how much he loves her and stuff.

And I'm like, why would you throw that away? Your husband just died, and you just throw a love note and his watch away in the freaking trash? You fucking monster. I'm sorry. Like, no. And that just fueled the anger that we had. How evil. Really see how evil she really was. Like, heartless. It was very, um, just devastating. I mean, Dad was only 50 when he died, right?

It was just nuts. Rick started recording his phone calls with Terry, taking notes on everything she said. Both siblings now believed she'd had a hand in his death. They could never find any medical professional that affirmed a cancer diagnosis for Don. Terry had been pushing to have Don cremated immediately after he died,

but fortunately, because of the fact that he'd died in a different county than he'd resided in, because of the fact that he died in a different county than he'd resided in, an autopsy was, in fact, performed. When the autopsy report came out, there was no cancer.

I'm like, of course there's no cancer. And Terry's response was, well, the Black Lords hid it. It's like, she's got an answer for everything.

Had Terry known Don had wanted to leave her? Had she grown tired of him? Some accounts of the time indicated that Terry had seemed irritated by Don. He'd been having some breathing issues of late,

which I guess annoyed her. I don't know because my dad didn't have any money. He had a desk. That's all he had. That's all he brought away with him from the divorce was a desk. Through the years, Janet has given a lot of thought to how Terry convinced her dad. How she took an intelligent man, made him her servant,

told him he had cancer, then urged him to take his own life. Part of it is, she made her followers believe that death was not final. It's not bad to kill yourself because you're just moving. You're not dying. You're moving on to the next plane of existence. And so she would always convince them that something bad has happened. Black Lords have attacked you. You're not going to be safe.

You're going to endanger your family if you stay you. You're not going to be safe. You're going to endanger your family if you stay alive. You're going to, you know, stuff like that. She makes them think they're doing this heroic thing by taking their life and moving on to the next plane of existence, you know? And it's like she feeds them this vocabulary and this belief system so that when it's time to conveniently make them move on,

you know, they don't see it as, oh my God, I'm actually killing myself. I'm leaving my family forever. You know what I mean? They minimize death. They minimize the importance of it, you know. After Don died, Rick called up one of Terry's daughters and asked if he could come over and get some of his dad's things. His guns were magically locked up or something like that

because he had an old.22 rifle that I grew up shooting and learning how to shoot. He had a double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun, and he had a.30-06, and never did find those. But she let me take some of his other stuff, including his bracelet that he wore. And then eventually I ended up getting his big opal that he also wore around his neck. I don't think Terry would have been as open to allow me to go get some of his stuff. I don't think Terry would have been as open to allow me to go get some of his stuff.

But, you know, you could tell Kathy was feeling bad about Dad. It continued to baffle Rick and Janet, and spoke perhaps to an even darker intent on Terry's part. She wasn't just interested in the financial waterfall these deaths might provide her. Perhaps, in Don's case, she just wanted to get rid of him. I'm pretty convinced that she, you know, convinced him.

Terry's typical mode was to find out what created the most issues for people and then leverage that against them to do things like take their life. And this twisted strategy would make a criminal conviction all but impossible. No smoking gun, no murder charge. If the DA can't make a case stick against Terry, maybe they could stop her. For good this time. The body count was just too high.

But that's not what happened. Something interesting came up in the process of reporting this story. Remember those counseling sessions between Terry and Dorothy? Turns out, two people provided those tapes to us.

One was anonymous and wished to remain so. And the second set of tapes were stashed away in Rick's attic, collecting dust for years. They're the same recordings, and Rick can't remember how he got access to them. But there is one distinguishing factor. On Rick's tapes, the recordings have dates. And that conversation Terry had, the one about eating chopped ham and making love all day to Don?

The love that Don and I had and when we made love was just totally pure. They were recorded after Don's suicide. A bizarre reminiscence about your dead spouse. The kind of thing you might say to subtly compel your most faithful followers into believing that you could never dream of harming a man that you just love so much. But like everything else in Terry's world, the dreams were more like nightmares. Nightmares that most certainly always came true.

Next on Scary Terry. They were two searchers who were really, really tortured and went deeper and deeper and deeper into dark places at the very time that they were being persuaded that they were going to light places. These journals describe increasing confusion, frustration, and then ultimately physical discomfort at how messed up life seemed to them. And ultimately, those journals included talk of bullets. I'm out. and entire network of other great true crime and investigative podcasts, all ad-free.

Plus, on the first of every month, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series. That's all episodes, all at once. Search for The Binge on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page. Not on Apple? Head to getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen.