The Binge Cases: Scary Terri - Scary Terri | 5. The White Pill

Episode Date: November 28, 2024

Terri’s manipulation is evolving with horrible consequences. She’s now telling her followers that death isn’t final and that another chapter awaits. 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

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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 access wherever you listen. The Binge, feed your true crime obsession. The Bch.

Before we get started, I just want to let you know that we do discuss suicide in this episode. So, please, listen with care. People talk about the Texas sky. It's big, grand. But there's more to it than that. There's a sense of perspective, awe even, that holds its lovers captive. And under that wide canvas, the human drama plays out, small and terrifying below. By the late 1980s, the drama that surrounded Terry Hoffman's small circle

was beginning to bleed out from its protective covering. Hi, my name is Pete Slover, and I'm an attorney in Austin, Texas. At the time that the Hoffman case was unfolding, I was a reporter for the Dallas Morning News. Pete was a cub reporter in the 80s when he joined the paper. And for one of his first big stories, he started looking into Terry and her group. By then, Devereux Cleaver had drowned. Glenn Cooley overdosed. Sandra and Louise had driven off a cliff. Don Hoffman had taken his life in a hotel on account of cancer he didn't have. I didn't see anything that was obvious

that would explain their deaths, but what I did see was Terry Hoffman's name recurring in multiple places. It's easy to kind of roll up these series of events into one kind of crazy story. But at the same time, you have to think of each one of these victims as being deeply affected and arguably their lives ruined, their family members' lives ruined by these circumstances. So that's a huge thing. So Pete went looking for answers. I talked to her on the phone. Terry Hoffman. He called her up. At that point, she would have been in her early 50s. She was very soft-spoken, very quiet, and did not betray anything of what other people recounted

as something of a pretty stiff temper. Pete Slover was particularly interested in what happened to one couple, the Goodmans, and their involvement with Terry, because he actually knew David. I was a student of David Goodman, who was a professor at Southern Methodist University. He had this kind of big, blocky, bowl haircut

that seemed a little bit dated, even in the 80s when I knew him. Kind of a Sir Lancelot look going on. And he was kind of funny and light and very, very intellectual. His specialty was something new at the time, how to integrate computers into workplaces. He'd gotten a PhD at Yale and eventually found himself in Dallas as a professor at SMU. His son, Tony, summed him up this way. In a way, fairly conservative, but he was like a hippie at heart.

Free spirit. Professionally, David had figured things out. He had a great job, had written a best-selling book on economics, but the equation of love was a different matter for him. All that changed when he met Glenda at a conscious development meeting. Terry introduced them and, later, would officiate their wedding. David and Glenda had both led full lives before they met. Glenda had three kids from a prior marriage.

David had Tony and his brother Rick. When they met, David's kids had headed off to college. And so they were two empty masters. I think they, you know, really wanted to believe they were on a, you know, spiritual journey, making the world a better place, making the universe a better place. Terry began to occupy the space left behind by their kids. Together, they shared a quest for the meaning of life.

And most importantly, what happens after life, the beyond. It's a journey that led them all the way to the edge of an abyss. that led them all the way to the edge of an abyss. By then, they were so desperate and afraid and listening to one voice, one woman who promised them death was not an end. I teach that an individual does not only have one life to live, but many. Do you fear death as well? No, I don't.

Could Terry have pushed the Goodmans, like her other followers, to believe that their soul would return to Earth someday? That they needn't fear death? From Sony Music Entertainment, this is Scary Terry. I'm Jonathan Hirsch. Chapter 5, The White Pill. 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 au.org slash curious. By the time Tony and his brother Rick left for college, his dad had been involved with Terry for over 15 years. This wasn't a flash-in-the-pan thing. He was a true believer. And as the years went on, Tony said his dad's ideas became stranger, more extreme. Terry, it seemed, loomed larger in his worldview now.

He was definitely at the point where I'd do anything she says because he is the incarnation of Jesus. This sounds familiar to me. In the group I was raised in, something similar happened. A guru-type figure who started out as a kind of spiritual cheerleader, a life coach. Over the years, he began to cast himself with a wider net. Terry now had the power to control your body, your thoughts. She wasn't just having visions of Jesus. She was Jesus. Jesus. He started talking about these pills that Hoffman gave him

that raises your energy to the spiritual level and puts you in touch with God. And that once the world found out about these pills, everything would be different. It was probably about that time I really felt like it was getting too strange. By now, both Rick and Tony were out of the house. Glenda and David lived on a beautiful tree-lined street near campus in North Dallas. Somewhere along the line, David had stopped talking to his son, Rick. Terry had told him not to.

This was a giant, blood-red flag billowing in the breeze before a hurricane. At least to us, now, knowing what we know. Saturday, November 25th, 1989. It's been a decade since Devereaux Cleaver died on the rocks in Hawaii. On Edge Pine Drive in Dallas, near the campus of SMU, David and Glenda Goodman's neighbor noticed their dog looking unwell, thinner than it was before. He was concerned

because he hadn't seen or heard from the couple in weeks, and he wasn't sure if anyone was feeding their animals in what he assumed was their absence. The neighbors noticed that the dogs were in the backyard and the dogs were looking gaunt and unfed. The blinds on the house were drawn shut. Nobody answered when he knocked on the door. So he went around to the side of the house. That's when he saw it. All the blinds in the front of the house were shut. But from around the side, looking into the den,

he could see the outline of a body. Lifeless and bloodied. What had happened in that house? Had David or Glenda been murdered? They called the police. They had been dead for some number of weeks. Both Glenda and David. Paramedics forced their way into the house.

As the door opened, the smell of death and decomposition rushed out so strongly that the two responders threw up on the front lawn, then put on gas masks. Once equipped, they pressed on amidst plumes of black flies swirling in the rank air. They were discovered dead some serious amount of time after they had killed themselves. And as such, the evidence was degraded to the point that the police just said it could be a murder-suicide, it could be a murder-murder simultaneously, or it could be simultaneous suicide. They never really got to the bottom of how things played out. David and Glenda were found in their den,

an alarm clock set between them. Each of them had what appeared to be self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head, each from a small caliber pistol found near their bodies. The alarm clock, I'm guessing, marked out the time they would each pull the trigger, side by side, exiting this world together. 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. And that's what led to their death. There were some outstanding questions regarding their deaths. What was the timer used for? And if they had shot themselves point blank in the head, how had David's glasses stayed on? All elements that were hard to have much insight into. The Goodmans had become so isolated

and their bodies so completely decomposed by the time they were discovered. Questions did start to emerge about their involvement with Terry, both from what was unearthed in the diary, but also the money. They had paid her hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years. They transferred her a significant amount of money in increments up to $40,000.

In all, there was more than $100,000 they had given her over probably 10 months. And beyond that, there were notes in their journals about how they needed to get a lawyer to get the deed to their property transferred to Ms. Hoffman. That never actually happened, but it was pretty clear that that was their intent. How had the Goodmans ended up killing themselves if they had?

What proof was there that Terry had a hand in coercing them to die by suicide? I hoped Tony would help me be able to get to the bottom of it. By the time they died, they were incredibly low. But their spiral started innocently enough. David told his son that he would see things in meditation sometimes. Things that he would feel compelled to act on. That these were actual communications from God that he needed to trust.

I think he and Glenda would, and I don't have too many specifics here, would have a meditation and then they would get these impressions. You know, just whatever they happened to imagine. And then they would get these impressions, you know, just whatever they happened to imagine. And then they would go execute on it. Like, God told me not to eat corn ever again. And then they would just not eat corn ever again. But the ideas that God relayed to him were, of course, not all as harmless as don't eat corn. He inclined to self-isolate.

I wanted to stay in touch with my father, and to do that, I kind of needed to believe that there was... I didn't want to believe he was... He'd just been involved in a cult his whole life. By 1989, David and Glenda had completely cocooned themselves. The blinds were shut. For weeks at a time, nobody came in or out of the house.

Some neighbors just thought they were traveling. And it's true they were quite busy during this time. At least according to Glenda's journals. Journals that Pete Slover from the Dallas Morning News eventually was able to read through. There were also journals that they kept that showed that they were just mentally tortured, but they were rife with and laced through with references to Ms. Hoffman, her spiritual teachings, pagan deities, her whole philosophy of supernatural things. It appeared that David and Glenda were engaging in a kind of messed up role play.

In those journals, she adopted the identity of Venus and he adopted the identity of Jupiter. And then most of their counseling had to do with what Jupiter and Venus would do. In one entry, Glenda transcribed the voice of God, declaring her and David's new identities. You are no longer David Goodman, son of Alice and Leonard. That person is gone because the programming is totally wiped out. And once the Goodmans no longer believed they were themselves, their journals started alluding to the next life,

the one that awaited Venus and Jupiter beyond the earthly plane. Terry and Marcus took Jupiter and Venus by the hand and led us to a beautiful glittering house in the purple realm. It was our house. Terry took us all to the city, a crystal city with many large,

beautiful buildings, but very few people. Most are still down in the Lower Realms. Purple Realms? Crystal cities? This all sounded psychedelic, like the Goodmans were in an altered state. And, as it turned out, the journals suggested Terry may have been manipulating the couple with drugs. Some journals alluded to Terry providing white pills for meditation sessions, during which the voices of the so-called masters instructed the Goodmans to give Terry material gifts to prove their devotion. The last time we used the pills, we were given this idea.

The masters, Terry especially, gave me the special gift of placing my spirit totally and permanently within my body. At the time they told David they would give him his spirit totally as soon as he passed the next test regarding money. They instructed David to buy Terry a brand new car, a 1988 Lincoln Continental. We would be told by the masters which dealer to go to.

It would seem that Terry didn't just have the couple in her thrall. She was providing drugs as they spiraled into a state of utter despair. She was providing drugs as they spiraled into a state of utter despair. These journals described increasing confusion, frustration, and then ultimately physical discomfort at how messed up life seemed to them. And then things took an even more desperate turn. And ultimately, those journals included talk of bullets. The union of your physical and your spirit is imminent.

Do not give in to the lies that they spread that you won't get your spirits. They can stop you by destroying your faith. Ignore all these negative symptoms. Shower, clean up, walk, etc. Keep your mind busy. And most important, deny that you have any interference. Keep faith that you will get your spirit soon. Your consciousness can overcome this if you don't give in. By then, the Goodmans were distressed and losing hope fast. Adding bullets to their feverish delusions was not going to end well. In another sequence of entries, David asks questions of God.

Glenda answered those questions by channeling the voice of the divine. Glenda and David's parts are being read by actors. Just like with the shooting, if you do that, I can make you a success. That is, can make you a success. That is, can make you yourself, your spirit. God, would it be possible for you to make us feel well? God, I don't feel that I can continue. Do you think I'm lying?

I know you are not lying. These were very detailed journals, and they were really sad. God, are you just going to leave us stranded in this bad state? You are not in this bad state all alone. Even when it appears that you, that we, are not talking to you, we are with you. And we are sharing the burden of your karma. And we too feel the hurt and the pain right along with you. We never disclosed this to you before because it was necessary to make you resentful toward us all.

And also resentful toward Terry in the physical. We are, I've got a note, trying to read the tea leaves of 40 years old journals. But they are riddled with clues. It's clear, at least to me, that Terry could have provided the Goodmans psychedelic drugs. And she certainly made the next life seem much better than the here and now.

Terry was their shepherd. And she led them to obliv started. What was the last thing that filled you with wonder, that took you away from your desk, or your car in traffic, or your sink full of dishes? As an actor, it's very free being part of these shows. You can step in the booth and kind of be anything. Well, for us, and I'm going to guess for some of you, that thing is...

Anubhay! Hi, I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee Alec Murray. And I'm Leah President. And welcome to Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect. It's a weekly news show. I literally, when I saw it, when I found out about this, I

literally had like a nervous breakdown, in a good way. With the best celebrity guests. I've never pirated anything, but I'll steal it if I have to. That was how I felt when I started to get really hooked on Black Butler. Oh, it's coming back.

It's coming back. So join us every Friday, wherever you get your podcasts and watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. Pete was now hot on the trail. There was an article about the Hoffmans in the Dallas Morning News, it seemed, every week.

David's father, Leonard, filed a wrongful death suit. And so did Rick and Janet Hoffman, after their father took his own life, thinking he had cancer. The walls were closing in. Would this be the end to Terry's reign of terror? The Hoffmans certainly hoped so. They'd been dealing with CDBMS for 15 years. They'd seen a string of mysterious deaths play out. Their parents divorced. Their father took his own life.

But Rick said they kept trying to nail them down for depositions, to move the suit forward, and there'd be crickets. She just ghosted. Why? Well, a wrongful death suit is a civil case, not criminal. They wouldn't be able to send her to jail if they won. But they would be able to drain her bank accounts the way she had to her many followers.

That is, if she had any money left. And soon she would claim that she did not. Terry Hoffman filed for bankruptcy. It's perhaps the most chilling and unfathomable of paradoxes about Terry. So many followed her gentle prodding in the direction of their own end. And with each of these deaths, there remained a sense of injustice, an injustice no criminal court seemed to be able to remedy. Their deaths were their choice, no matter the influence, no matter the clear incentive Terry had to see many of them go away.

So the victims' families did only what they could under the law. By 1989, multiple wrongful death suits were filed against Harry. Conveniently, she was now claiming to be bankrupt. And it wasn't a moment too soon. More stories began to emerge of mysterious deaths, disappearances, murder. Four days after Don Hoffman took his life, there was Jill Bounds.

She was a young, single psychologist who'd been found murdered in her Dallas apartment. Pieces of her diary had been torn out, leaving a bloody trail. Little sign of a struggle would point to the act being committed by someone she knew. And in her Rolodex, they found Terry Hoffman's information. She'd visited her for consultations. Robin Otstadt was a curriculum writer for the Dallas Public Schools. She told her ex-husband she'd contracted viral hepatitis from a banana peel, and that things weren't looking good.

Within days of visiting Terry, she was found dead in her apartment from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1987. Meanwhile, Terry had branched outside of Dallas. She started hosting meditation sessions in the Chicago area. Nearly a year after Robin died, a follower of Terry's named Mary Levinson died of a drug overdose in a Chicago hotel. She donated her sizable estate to an undisclosed organization, which her family had feared was conscious development. Charles Southern was an important member of CDBMS's new and growing group in the Chicago and Evanston area.

He went missing after leaving the group, and to this day has never been found. His body never recovered. has never been found. His body never recovered. Charles would later be the subject of an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. Terry Hoffman cultivated followers around the country. Among those who joined the Chicago branch of conscious development was Charles Southern Jr. Southern was assistant chairman of the English department

at a local junior college. During his college's winter break in December 1987, Southern planned to spend a couple of weeks in India and was never heard from again. Southern mysteriously disappeared more than seven years ago, and his family believes it may be no coincidence that he was a disciple of Terry Hoffman. The pressure to stop Terry was on. Hello? Hello, Terry.

Yes, hi, Dorothy. Can you hold on a minute? Sure. The conversations between Terry and Dorothy continued, mostly about Dorothy's spiritual and sexual development. But this week, January of 1990, Dorothy asked Terry about herself. What was she up to? I was wondering how things went with you and your legal business. She's talking about the wrongful death suits. This was a couple of years before the bankruptcy. Well, we're still in the process, so we're still in the middle of it.

Dorothy asked if there was any way she could help. So we should still send you some energy? Yeah, we still need energy to see if they'll back out. Energy or? Yeah, we still need energy to see if they'll back out. He says he doesn't think they'll back out because they think that I have a lot of money and they think that... That they can get some. That they can get some.

She told Dorothy that a trial would be expensive. That the kids, this I'm presuming is meant to be Janet and Rick, would be bled dry by the cost of depositions. Drag it out as long as he can, because the longer he drags it out, the more it's going to cost them personally. That's going to be our tactic. This isn't the humble servant of God crying foul. I hear a clever strategist. Someone who managed to skirt the law long enough. She wasn't about to get caught now.

Okay, send them pale blue. And then visualize or imagine money coming to them. Yeah. Okay. Well, you can do that for me, too. My attorney is going to cost over $100,000. Oh, my goodness. Yes.

All right. We'll do that. Thanks. Now, is this kind of experience, the hard things like this, is this part of your evolution as well? No, it's BL stuff. It's what stuff? BL stuff. Black Lord stuff.

Oh, okay. And you can't control somebody that's out of the cycle like his children are out of the cycle, but they're very, very greedy. They're totally greedy people. Yes. You can see how casually the term Black Lords is thrown about in privacy.

And as Terry fell deeper and deeper into the fiery pit of controversy, she could tighten her ranks by pointing to the evil in the world. The Black Lords had waged this dreadful battle against her and the group. Send energy.

It happens so often that it's become a cliche. The criminal doesn't get caught in the act. It's oftentimes a small oversight, a slight hiccup, a wrong signature on the right paperwork. That's what the authorities get you on. signature on the right paperwork. That's what the authorities get you on. And Terry, as we've learned, was not exactly a thorough administrator when it came to her many businesses. Okay, everybody got their recorders on? I obtained a copy of the debtors' meetings from Terry's bankruptcy. They're called 341 hearings. Basically, when you go into bankruptcy, the government appoints a trustee.

In this case, the woman speaking, Molly Barthelow. This is the continuation of the Terry Hoffman 341. Her job was to make sure all the people Terry owed money to had a chance to get their money back. So anyone who claimed that Terry owed them money

could appear at a 341 meeting. And in a highly unusual turn of events, more than mortgage brokers and credit card companies showed up at this meeting. There were victims' families. Did you already identify yourself? I'm Jim Barclow. Jim Barclow, the lawyer who repped Sandra's brother, Kroom Beatty,

when he contested her will, and later the Hoffman children in their wrongful death suit. He was given the opportunity to grill Terry in these creditor meetings, too. She'd bought a house in Fresno. He wanted to know where she'd gotten the money. And how was that house acquired? I had bought some trustees in California with the part of the money that I received

from Sandra Cleaver's death. Something about the coldness with which she answers his question, to use a family member's phrase, gives me chill bumps. Where did you get the money, Terry? From your client's dead sister. Then there was the issue of land in Colorado. What does that person say? Simon. Roger Simon.

Terry owed a debt on land in Colorado that she sold to a man named Roger Simon. This is a Roger Simon wrote her a letter wanting to buy part of the Colorado property. Roger Simon, a friend of Terry's, interested in buying her land.

For $20,000. And I don't know how that calculates in terms of equity or anything along those lines. I mean, obviously we need more information. A boyfriend, more specifically. Their relationship doesn't come up in this meeting, though. But if Terry had a man in her life who was buying up her property as she faced bankruptcy, that meant she appeared to be taking assets off the books publicly. But if privately, he was just keeping it out of view for her at her bidding,

well, that was a problem. keeping it out of view for her at her bidding. Well, that was a problem. A problem that, potentially, amounted to money laundering. Soon, people started to question, including victims' families, whether Terry was trying to pull a fast one on the federal government. Next time, on the finale of Scary Terry. When you hide assets from a bankruptcy court, it is a federal crime.

And with Terry's own freedom on the line, a shocking end to two decades of controversy. She has a lot of followers and she could easily have gone on the lam. And I go in search of answers among the wreckage. There was spiritual deception and plain evil. Plain evil and greed. Telling this story will be closure for me. I'm out. binge access to an 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

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