True Crime Campfire - Episode 26: Bad Karma: The Cult of Conscious Development of Body, Mind, and Soul, Pt. 2

Episode Date: January 3, 2020

Join us for part 2 of this epic and disturbing story.Sources:https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/1982/december/rise-and-fall-of-a-north-dallas-cult-conscious-development/https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2014/06/d-magazines-40-greatest-stories-death-in-a-north-dallas-cult/https://truenoirstories.wordpress.com/2016/12/31/terri-hoffman/#:~:targetText=Murder%20of%20Jill%20Bounds,and%20became%20a%20popular%20psychologist.https://unsolved.com/gallery/charles-southern/Follow us, campers!Patreon: https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Last time we began the bizarre and twisting story of Terry Hoffman in the cult of conscious development of body, mind, and soul. Terry sold her philosophers a cosmology. she'd cobbled together from bits and pieces of other religions and philosophies, a Franken philosophy, if you will. But her followers weren't so much reaching enlightenment as emptying their bank accounts, right into Terry's pockets. And now she was drawing them into stressful spiritual warfare, telling them they were under constant attack by the black lords, evil beings from another plane of existence. These black lords could possess human beings and give them a toxic, malignant energy that put everyone around them in danger. When we left you, Terry was busy convincing her most ardent follower, Sandy, that Sandy's teenage daughter, Devereaux, had been taken over by the evil spirits. Things were about to get real dark.

Join us now for Part 2 of Bad Karma, the cult of conscious development of body, mind, and soul. Devereaux and her dad were thick as thieves. In fact, for months, she'd been campaigning to go and live with Chuck. Unlike Sandy, who had become less and less involved as a mom, as she got more deeply involved with the cult, Chuck was always there for his daughter. But then, in the winter of 79, that dynamic shifted. For years, Devereaux had complained to her friends

that she and her mom never really had a mother-daughter relationship, the kind where you can sit around and talk things out. But lately, Devereaux said that had been changing. In December, she told Chuck that she and her mom had started having real mother-daughter talks. Sandy had even talked Devereaux into going with her to a conscious development retreat, and after that, their relationship was the best it had ever been. Sandy had gotten engaged that year to a man named Lynn Fairchild, and in February of 79, Sandy, Lynn, and Devereaux all flew to Hawaii for a trip.

It was actually supposed to be Sandy and Lynn's honeymoon, even though they hadn't gotten married yet. My impression from the sources I've seen was that in the past, this is the kind of trip Sandy would have taken by herself or with Terry, leaving Devereaux at home with the housekeeper Weezy. So I imagine Devereaux, who'd always wanted nothing more than her mom's approval, was probably thrilled to be invited. And this was just heartbreaking to me. Yeah. That how badly she wanted her mom's attention and approval. Yeah, she's just a kid, that poor kid. I know.

Just a little eighth grade girl. And on February 25th, 1979, Sandy and Devereaux went out on a raft together in the waters of the Wailupe Peninsula outside Honolulu. Now, this was a bit of a weird place to go swimming or rafting or really any kind of recreational water stuff. There wasn't much of a beach to speak of, just a sharp coral reef. And most people use this area just for crabbing, so not swimming or rafting or snorkeling or anything like that. but Terry Hoffman had been there before on a previous trip, so presumably she had told Sandy about the lagoon there, so it was very pretty, which I guess was the attraction.

Lynn Fairchild, Sandy's fiancé, wasn't with them that day. He was just taking a nap back at the hotel. And Sandy later told Chuck, who is, of course, her ex-husband and Devereaux's dad, that they'd waded out in the shallow water to where the coral reef began, and as I said, the reef was really sharp, so they got onto the raft at that point. Sandy said they just paddled out over the reef when a big wave came and upended the raft. And she said that Devereaux had looked at her in a panic and said, I'm scared, mommy.

Which, by the way, Chuck later said was really weird for him because Devereaux was apparently a really strong swimmer and not the type to really react to something like that with fear. But, I mean, I guess you never know. I mean, I would be scared. Yeah, that's a scary situation. Yeah. So Sandy told Devereaux, hold on to my hand. we're going to be okay and they joined hands but then another big wave came and separated them and sandy lost sight of devro she said she had dived under the water over and over to try to find her but she couldn't see

her and the next thing sandy knew she was waking up on top of the reef like a little part of it that was sticking up out of the water so she was surrounded by water she still couldn't see devro so she just screamed and screamed for help and somebody heard her and called the fire department and they rescued sandy but they still couldn't find Devereaux. So again, we're talking about an eighth-grade girl here, so 13, 14 years old. Just awful. So Chuck rushed to the airport to fly to Honolulu as soon as he found out that she had gone missing during this rafting excursion. And this is just awful.

He found out that the rescuers or searchers had recovered Devereaux's body while he was at the airport waiting to board the plane. Oh, my God. And I just cannot imagine many things worse than that, can you? not, no, because then you're stuck on a plane. Oh, God. Yeah, for hours and hours. Like, it's a long flight to Hawaii from the mainland. Oh, poor Chuck. And then while he was on the plane, he brought his friend along with him. So he was there with somebody to support him. And while he was on the plane, one of Terry Hoffman's conscious development cronies called Chuck's house and left a message on the answering machine saying that the group had a document that they

were supposed to show him. Now, this document turned out to be Devereaux's will. his eighth grade daughters will which of course you remember from part one left everything to terry and conscious development so this was their focus on the day of a little girl's death which is just unbelievable oh my god it pisses me off so much disgusting i know it's just what the hell is wrong with you people so sandy had been taken to the hospital after she was rescued she had some bruises and scrapes from the coral reef but nothing really serious, no serious injuries or anything like that. And when Chuck

got to Hawaii, he went to the hospital to see her. In his Texas monthly article about the case, George Rodriguez quotes Chuck talking about this visit to see Sandy on the day that Devereaux drowned. He says when we first got there, she was acting like a normal human being. She

cried. She said she was so sorry about Devereaux. She thanked me for coming to see her. And then, and this is incredibly creepy, Terry Hoffman walked into the room and Sandy just turned off the waterworks like a faucet just instantly as soon as Terry walked into the room and what Chuck and his friend described as a glazed look washed over her face and she started saying stuff like Devereux will be happier in heaven just yikes right and this was just like on a dime the second Terry walked into the room so that to me is incredibly creepy and Chuck and his friend Gene, who'd come to Honolulu with him, were both just hugely disturbed by it. It felt to them like Sandy wasn't allowed to grieve for her daughter.

So as soon as, like, mean mommy showed up, she had to turn that off. Wow. Just, ugh. And, you know, to me, this is just a really stark illustration of the tight psychological grip that cult leaders can have over their followers. I mean, this is a woman who's just lost her daughter and feels for some reason like she can't, show any sadness over that. Devereux will be better off in heaven, which of course, if you

remember from part one, Sandy used to say that to Chuck. That was part of why they divorced because Chuck was worried that she was going to kill their child. Yeah. Because she'd be, quote, better off in heaven. So, anyway, they did an autopsy on Devereaux's poor little body and they found no obvious signs of foul play. She had no alcohol or drugs in her system. But Chuck and his friend were deeply troubled by her death, just didn't feel right to them. Like I said, Devereaux was a strong swimmer, and to Chuck, it just didn't make a lot of sense. Now, back at home, Sandy seemed to withdraw. She canceled her in Lynn's upcoming wedding. She seemed to be unraveling a little bit, like even her handwriting got weird, apparently, and she was having trouble, like, balancing her

bank book and stuff like that, which had never been hard for her before. Her brother tried to talk her into distancing herself from Terry and the cult because he sensed that this was not a positive influence, but Sandy was not having it. In fact, she became fixated on the idea that her brother was going to fight her in court over the will that she'd written

to leave her entire estate to Terry. And I'm sure Terry was the one that planted that idea in her head because Terry was a big fan of alienating people from their loved ones. So Katie, what's the number one tool of an abuser again? Is it isolation? Yeah.

yeah it is and terry also convinced sandy that she had the ability to speak with the dead this woman is exhausting she said that she had talked to her late husband glen and now she said she could reach out to devereau so according to terry she was sandy's only direct line to her dead daughter and sandy of course bought into it wholeheartedly and we go over there all the time and say talk to devro for me and not long after devereaux's death Sandy made arrangements to leave even more money to Terry in the event of her death. She took out a $300,000 life insurance policy with Terry as beneficiary. And this, by the way, was a much larger policy than the one her insurance agent recommended.

Now, this, if you listen to Season 1 of True Crime Camp Fire, is going to sound real familiar. Remember Susan Reinhard and her, like, $750,000 of life insurance for a school teacher, like way, way more life insurance than was normal? Yes. Red flag. So now, if Sandy were to die, Terry Hoffman would inherit not only her entire estate, so her house, her jewelry, all of her possessions, her savings, but she'd also get a hefty life insurance payout on top of all that.

So she would clean up like crazy in the event of Sandy's death. And Sandy had, as we've said earlier, a 78-year-old housekeeper named Weezy. And Weezy had never liked Terry Hoffman. And that's pretty much the only thing I know about Weezy. Weezy, other than that she was kind of like a second mom to Sandy and Devereaux, but just because she never liked Terry, I like her. Yeah, big fan. So I'm Team Weezy. Yeah. And Weezy had always been really good to Sandy, and she had taken care of Devereaux while Sandy was out gallivanting around the country with conscious development. And she just felt like Terry had an unnatural influence over Sandy.

She is 100% correct. So it was really, really odd to Weezy's friends when they later found out that in June of 1981, Weese wrote a will and made Terry the executor of her very small estate. And all they could figure was that Weezy just adored Sandy so much that she would do whatever Sandy asked her to do because no way in hell would Weezy be doing this of her own

accord. No. And we're not talking about a lot of money here. You know, she wasn't wealthy. But obviously it was very important to Terry and Sandy that Terry get her paws on every red cent she possibly can. And a few months later, Sandy and Weezy took off on a car trip to Colorado.

Now, normally when Sandy went out of town, she asked her neighbors to watch over the house and mow the lawn or feed her cat and stuff like that, but this time she didn't do that. As a matter of fact, she had the locks changed on the house, and she didn't even tell her neighbors that she was leaving. Now, Weezy's friends later said that Weezy hadn't been feeling well and really didn't want to go on the trip, but that Sandy kind of strong-armed her into it. So, for a couple of days, everything seemed normal. Sandy and Weezy spent a night with Terry's sister in Colorado Springs

and then they went to look at some land that the cult owned but the next day a driver happened to see a car at the foot of an almost 500 foot cliff and two bodies lying near the wreckage it was Sandy and Weezy Investigators noted that there were no tire marks on the road above the car so usually if you're about to go off a cliff and you don't like that idea and want to not go

the cliff you're going to slam on those brakes and there's going to be a sign of that on the road it's going to get rubber all over the road there was none of that so it looked to them like sandy had just driven right off the cliff on purpose almost 500 feet to her and weesey's death and nobody had a clue why she did it she didn't leave a note but terry hoffman sure cleaned up yeah because you know sandy'd been a wealthy woman and she had all that life insurance god so holy shit shit, right? And we're thinking back, of course, to Glenn Cooley and his suicide. And, you know, now we've got two suicides, apparent suicides and one, you know, murder because Weezy was in the car with Sandy. Right. I very much doubt she wanted to go over that clip. So, and by the way, how awful is it that Weezy was in, that Sandy involved Weezy in this? I am, I am just so furious about that because she was just, she was just an innocent bystander. yeah absolutely and she didn't even like terry and she wanted no part of conscious development she just loved sandy that was her only crime in this her crime not of not liking terry was

probably enough to get her killed i think just so that so that this nightmare of a subhuman piece of garbage could just have her tiny little estate in addition to sandy's big one's just awful god she's horrible so what do we think here i mean i don't know about you but i have strong suspicions that A, Sandy murdered her own daughter I mean, we have Terry constantly whispering in her ear about Devereaux being one of the Black Lord's

conduits and that she was taken over by evil and that Devereaux was dangerous to the entire group because of this possession or whatever the hell it was supposed to be. So do you think that Terry coerced Sandy into killing Devereaux? Do you think Sandy killed her on her own? Well,

first of all, do you agree that she killed her in first place? Do you think it was because Terry, like, talked her into it and said she's dangerous, she'll be better off in heaven, you should do this? Or do you just, I remember, I mean, remember, like, that little lagoon where it happened, Terry reportedly was the one that told her where that was. I, I, I, 100% think that Terry was in Sandy's ear about killing Devereaux from day one. Because if you think about it, and this is another shade of season one, Devereaux stood directly. and Terry's way of inheriting Sandy's estate. Oh, absolutely. Because if, you know, if somebody who's that wealthy and has a surviving child dies and leaves absolutely not one thin dime to the child, I mean, Chuck in particular

could have contested that and probably could have won. Absolutely would have won. Or at least might have won. Yeah. So Terry would have been worried about that, just like Billy Bradfield was in season one, as you pointed out. So yeah, I think she did kill her. I think Sandy did kill her. I think it was probably at Terry's behest. And if she did, I think it was for Sandy most likely about protecting Devereaux from those evil spirits and sending her to heaven where she'd be safe and all this. But, and protecting the cult from her, you know, bad vibes or whatever. But of course, that was not what it was about for Terry. I don't believe that for a second. I mean, what teenage girl writes a will? No. Come on. That's just, I've never even

heard of such a thing. So Terry was, in my opinion, out for a payday. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. This one in particular kills me because I can't help imagine Devereaux's last moments. And God, I hope she didn't know her mom did it on purpose. I hope she thought it was an accident. Oh, I know. I know. And I've thought about, like, how it went down.

Like, because, again, Devereaux is a strong swimmer. So, you know, I'm, I know that they checked her body for, for drugs. They did a talk screen, but they don't check for everything. You know, like, who knows what it could have been. But, yeah, it's, I hope not to. I hope she didn't realize that she had been so badly betrayed. So, okay, so that's a horrible story. Several horrible stories in one.

So there are others, though, associated with Ms. Terry Hoffman in this cult. So we're going to move on to another one of these stories. The disappearance of Charles Southern Jr. Now, Charles Southern was the assistant chair of the English department at a Chicago college when he disappeared in 1987. And like most people who end up in cults, and of course many more who don't, Charles was what I would call a seeker. He'd always had an interest in philosophy and theology and literature. He was definitely an intellectual, somebody that was curious. He got involved with the Chicago chapter of conscious development and soon became really heavily involved,

started teaching courses to other members and leading meditation sessions. And then eventually he made a pilgrimage to Dallas and met Terry Hoffman in person. And very quickly, he rose in the ranks to become one of her inner circle. So one of these people that she drew in to the spiritual battles with the Black Lords. Yeah. And by this point, they were pretty much constantly under attack by the Black Lords. And she needed her inner circle to form a psychic shield around her. And of course, just like before, they felt this put them in danger too. And this, as you can imagine, caused enormous stress for Terry's true believers. I mean, take a second.

Imagine actually believing that you and your leader are under attack by minions of Satan. Absolutely. I mean, yeah, that would not be fun for anybody. No. And if you sincerely believe that, I can't imagine the constant paranoia and fear you would feel. Absolutely. It would be nightmarish. And so, you know, this kind of caused many members of the inner circle to start falling apart from stress.

And around this time, Charles and Terry had a falling out. Now, unfortunately, we couldn't find any specifics about this. It could have been Charles starting to see through Terry. Maybe she started that creepy bloodletting shit again, which a bunch of her inner circle left. because of before you know there's way too much like people cutting each other and taking each other's blood in this so far we're just popping up again and again stop taking each other's blood what is wrong with you people yeah and stop it's creepy like if even if you're not taking the blood stop letting somebody that is not a medical professional take your blood it's how you get

hepatitis people sure is We don't know. We don't know what happened, is the point of all that. But we do know that Terry had a tendency to announce that anybody who crossed her had been taken over as a conduit by the Black Lords. Did she brand Charles Southern this way? Was he being reprimanded by other cult members? It gets very likely. Yeah, I think that's probably the case. But all we can say for certain is that one day, Charles Southern was found wandering the streets of Chicago, holding a newspaper, and repeating the phrase, I lived for art. Which is not good, I think. Wow.

Yeah, that's a red flag. Something's not well in his mind. So Charles, a little background on him, came from a very distinguished family, Dr. and academics, and they rallied around him. They worried he might be suicidal, so his sister took him to the hospital, and he seemed to be recovering from whatever had gone awry in his mind. During this time in the hospital,

his mom visited him every day, and she said that every day, two conscious development members visited Charles. And... creepy. Yeah. And every time they visited, they asked her to leave so they could speak to Charles alone.

Yeah, his mom, like us, was not thrilled with this, but she did it anyway. She wanted to respect her son's wishes in autonomy. I mean, he was an adult, after all. Oh, yeah. There's no way to know what was said during those visits, unfortunately, but Charles recovered and went back to work at the college and went back to his work with the cult. By December of 87, to most people, it seemed that Charles seemed back to the college. to his normal routine, and he was planning a trip to India over the holiday break at school.

He spoke to his family several times in the days prior to the day he was scheduled to leave. His mom, however, thought something was wrong. Her maternal spidey senses were tingling. He assured her he was fine, though, and he was looking forward to his trip. Now, this did nothing to assuage her discomfort, because she was still uneasy, but like I said, Charles was an adult. She tried to respect his boundaries and put her worries aside, which again, again and again, we talk about Gavin De Becker's, the gift of fear, but don't, don't ignore your little voice. Really don't.

It doesn't lie to us very often, I don't think. If you're getting a persistent nagging feeling like something's not right here, don't let him go, ask him, you know, press him for details, you need to listen to that little voice. What's the worst that can happen? So you look like a dufus. Right. Or you make somebody a little bit annoyed with you. It's better that than what's getting ready to happen here, right? Mm-hmm. Because everyone assumed he left Frandia. And Charles didn't always keep in close contact with them when he was traveling. So nobody was concerned when they didn't hear from him for a couple of weeks. But then, when he didn't show up back at work after the holiday break and he didn't reach out to his family to tell them about his trip, everyone got worried. so his family let themselves into his apartment no charles but they found some really disturbing stuff

first his passport was lying on a desk devoid of any entrance stamps for india which of course meant he hadn't gone there because you don't get into another country without getting your passport stamps so where the hell has he been for weeks exactly in a drawer and this is the worst part his mom found a vial of a drawer similar to the South American poison curare. It is a paralytic anesthetic, which his doctor-mom realized right away. Yeah, that is one of the creepiest things I've ever heard in my life. And I can't even imagine how the hair is on the back of his mom's neck stood up when she found that.

Because if you don't know what curare is, like Katie said, it's a paralytic. and one of the synthetic forms of that drug is a drug called succinulcoline. Does that sound unfamiliar to any of you true crime aficionados? Because it comes up in poisoning cases quite a bit. And what a paralytic anesthetic is used for is if you're getting surgery and you have to be completely still for the procedure and they have to put in a breathing tube or whatever, they'll give you this drug to keep you still. And it paralyzes you from head to toe. So you have to have a breathing apparatus breathing for you or you will suffocate.

Now, if that's not scary enough, you're also completely awake and aware. So if you're given that and you're not also given anesthesia, you know, then it's like essentially being buried alive. Oh, so scary. You will be completely alive and awake inside your own mind and you won't be able to move and you will slowly suffocate to death. It's pretty much the scariest way I can imagine to die. Yeah. An absolute nightmare. And murdering somebody that way is pure evil.

Yeah. So why the hell an English teacher has that in his apartment? I can't even imagine. But not great. No, not good. Alarming, to say the least. Yes. They also found a strange little tableau in the center of the room.

An African ceremonial stool with Charles's coat folded inside out on top of of it and his hat resting on top of that. They later discovered that this was a Nigerian tribal symbol of death, which is also alarming. Yeah, this is not good any of it. So, last but not least, they found two scrawled, barely readable notes in Charles's handwriting. One said, I came under a bad influence and was trying to fight it myself. The other was a last Will and Testament, leaving everything he had to Terry Hoffman. Does that sound familiar, Whitney? It sure as hell does. I think we might have seen that a couple of times before.

Yeah, it's... Yeah, and, you know, that bad influence. I came under a bad influence and was trying to fight it myself. One wonders, is he talking about the Black Lords, or is he talking about Terry Hoffman? Right. Who knows? Both. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And Charles Southern hasn't been seen or heard from since. He's been sorely miss.

And I don't know how many of you campers are fans of the old unsolved mysteries, but that's where we first heard about this case. They covered Charles Southern's disappearance in one of the episodes. We'll try to find it on YouTube so you can watch it. Now, okay, what do we think happened here? Because there are a couple options, and both of them are. are equally fucking terrifying. Yeah.

Well, as I see it, there are two main theories, at least two I can think of. One is that he went off somewhere and committed suicide most likely, and maybe his body hasn't turned up because he checked into a hotel under an assumed name, and maybe he was just a John Doe somewhere, which has been known to happen. So that's option one, and this was him kind of maybe that ceremonial tableau. was a way to let people know kind of in a subtle way that that's what he was doing.

Or the other option would be that that was staging and that he's been murdered and his body disposed of somewhere after being convinced to leave a will, leaving everything to yet again Ms. Terry Hoffman.

And I think one of the creepiest parts of this is, as we said, the synthetic carari. I imagine it was probably succinctal coline. But there's there are a couple other drugs like that too, so... Right. I can't think of the names of them at the moment. What's the other one?

Sexinolene and, um, anyway, it'll come to me after we're done recording and then I'll be like, damn it. Yeah. Well, and here's, yeah. Here's the thing is we talk, you and I talk about profiling people a lot. And when we talk about profiling somebody that's committing suicide, they usually choose something that is going to be quick and painless. Yeah, that ain't quick and painless.

Neither of those, neither of those are accurate about this drug. because you die in pain and terror, and it is not quick. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, no, no. And, you know, something really horrifying just occurred to me as well, thinking about this drug slash poison. That is definitely not something that medical examiners test for on a talk screen.

And in fact, even if you do, it is very difficult to detect, which makes it a really, really, unfortunately, effective murder weapon if you can get your hands on it. Yes. Because it leaves the body incredibly quickly and really doesn't leave any traces. Right. So that, at least that you can find easily, and it certainly isn't on a standard talk screen. So it does make me wonder, you know, if this guy who's heavily involved with conscious development has gotten a hold of this curare, could this have been involved in Devereaux's death as well? I mean, as I said, she was a strong swimmer. I hadn't even thought of that. She was given this drug right before and then just pushed off of the raft.

Wow. I mean, yeah, that's scary. It's scary. I really hope that's not what happened. Oh, God. Every situation that I think of with Devereaux gets worse and worse. But I think the other indicator is that how would an English professor get his hands on this drug? Yeah, exactly.

I mean, he was well-traveled, but this isn't actual curare. it's it's the medical the paralytic anesthetic so I mean he wasn't a doctor his mom was I don't think his mom is scoring him and he sucks old coline you know yeah that's not even a fun no definitely not fun in any way shape or form opposite of fun so yeah it the fact that that was there really creeps me out so I don't know it's one of the two I think because I don't think this many years later he could have just disappeared and gone off the grid no and his family would have just never heard from him again and they were really close by all accounts. He would have resurfaced by now. So I definitely think something happened to end his life. Just whether it was suicide or murder, I don't know. Right. But it's creepy.

Right. Everything we're going to talk about today is the worst I think I've ever heard. And I just, it's hard. Okay, campers. Moving on to the next case associated with the cult. The murder of Jill Bounds. For this one, we have reporter Glenna Whitley to thank. She wrote a great article on this case for D Magazine in 1990.

It's called The Aura of Murder. So we'll make that available on our social media so you can read it if you're interested. Jill Bounds was a psychologist slash psychotherapist. She was really popular with her patients who described her as insightful. She didn't deal much with serious mental illness in her practice. Most of her patients came to her to figure out. out what was holding them back in life so they could become better, more successful people. And she was great at it. But like a lot of successful women, Jill struggled with relationships.

She ended up in a series of chaotic relationships. According to one of her close friends, Jill tended to manipulate men. Her friend said one of Jill's favorite games was to accuse a man of cheating on her, then get him to buy her stuff to make up for it. Wow. Yeah. So apparently she'd tell her friends. about it and laugh at the guy for being so gullible. Oh, classy. Yeah. That's a yikes for me, Jill.

Yeah, that's gross. Yeah, I'm not a fan of that behavior. So, she's clearly a complicated person. One of her exes, who was deeply in love with her and wanted to marry her until their relationship fell apart, said that she had two distinct sides of her personality. There was the loving, caring, charming side that he fell in love with, but then there was Ms. Hyde who would fly into a violent rage with hardly any provocation. Like, he'd come home a few minutes late for dinner, and she'd freak out and start screaming and hitting him. Yikes. Yeah, not great. It eventually became too much for that dude, and he broke it off. Jill lost some friends because of her volatility, too. It wasn't just

the men in her life that couldn't handle it. And that to me adds credence, because if it was just one or two ex-boyfriends that were saying, oh, yeah, she was crazy. I mean, you know, a lot of times people talk like that about their exes. But because she lost some of her platonic, like female friends for the same reason, to me, that lends credence to the fact that this was actually a pretty major part of her personality. So she was kind of a jekyll and hide. You know, she had these wonderful qualities, but man, seems like she had a lot of trouble regulating her emotion. Yeah, yeah. It's one thing for a dude to be like, bitches be crazy. And then another for her friends to be like, no, she was really unstable. Right. So that brings us to the early 70s. Jill got into the subjects that would eventually lead her right to Terry Hoffman's doorstep, along with the cult.

Reincarnation, macrobiotic cooking, tarot, astrology, auras, the whole shebang. Yeah, that's the whole shoot and match almost, right? Pretty much. I guess you're just missing veganism, although maybe a macrobotic diet is vegan. I have no idea what a macrobotic diet is. It sounds gross. Yeah, it doesn't sound good. I'm not excited to find out because now I have to know.

I'm going to look it up. But it probably does not include Cheetos, so I'm out. Yeah, tap out. I can't live without my Chester's hot fries. She, Jill, started offering tarot readings and astrological charts to her patients in addition to the traditional therapy, and some people, some people like me, felt that this was a violation of her ethics as a psychotherapist, since the state board specifically prohibited therapists from claiming that unproven therapies

like Tara were effective. The board also prohibited therapists from treating close friends and relatives, but Jill did it anyway. For some reason, they never disciplined her for that, but yeah, that's not a good look. That is not great. I mean, you can't be unbiased when it's somebody that you're close to. No. I mean, you know them and, you know, you're probably likely to be biased on their side. So if they're doing something stupid in their relationships, you might not be as likely to see that or tell them. It's just a bad idea. And I'm really surprised nobody ever reported her. Yeah, I'm shocked.

For that in particular. But she obviously didn't feel she had to play by the rules. Yeah. Yeah. So Jill discovered Terry and conscious development in 1973. And by 1979, she was heavily involved. But in 1982, she left the group. Her friends thought it was because of all the bad publicity surrounding Terry after the deaths of Glenn, Sandy, Devereaux, and Weese. Smart. I mean, she was one of the ones that was like, and I'm out after all that. Yeah. She kind of saw the writing on the wall. Right. And after Jill caught off her relationship with Terry, her house became infested with cockroaches. Oh, wow. Yeah. And Jill was convinced Terry was responsible, which I don't think is an exaggeration on her part. It's not impossible. So she told

people she was afraid of Terry and she referred to her as that witch. So in the late 80s, she let Terry back into her life. She started going to her for readings, paying her 60 bucks a pop. And in 1987, she became seriously involved with a man named Adam. All was hearts and flowers for a while, but soon, Jill followed a long-established pattern for her and became obsessed with the idea that he was cheating on her. According to Friends, Terry was telling Jill her boyfriend was abusive, that he had an evil energy. You know, the same kind of bullshit she used to tell Sandy about her ex-husband Chuck.

Yep. And as Jill got drawn more and more into Terry's web, she got more and more paranoid about her boyfriend. friend. She told friends he was abusive, and he denied this categorically, saying that the only one who ever hit anybody in their relationship with Jill. But eventually, Jill broke it off with him. Yeah, and I think it's really interesting here to see how yet again, with Jill, Terry is working hard to alienate her from the people in her life. And we talked about, you know, the number one tool of an abuser being isolation, alienation. And Terry used this, like, one of the main.

tools in her toolbox and it's you know we see it in every single case yeah so it's it's creepy and it seems to have been very effective yeah and you see it with colts usually removing them physically from like their immediate web of support but terry was really good at it doing it you know in their own homes yeah just psychologically yeah it's it's creepy so soon after on september On September 20th, 1988, Jill Bounds, was beaten to death in her sleep. Police found an open window. Interestingly, it was only one of a few windows in her house that were not hooked up to Jill's alarm system. Also interesting, that window couldn't be opened from the outside without making an unholy racket.

They suspected it had been opened from the inside. Was this crime scene staging? Sure looked like it. yep sure does it also looked like the killer had cleaned up in jill's bathroom after the attack there were tarot cards scattered all around her bed and someone had ripped out several pages of her journal from 1979 that's really interesting that somebody took some of her journal i mean it could just be a trophy but to me it's like there's something in there that the killer didn't want anybody to know right and it's interesting that they took part of the journal and not just the whole thing

not just the whole thing right yeah also missing was some gold gemstones expensive jewelry and her gun so what was it um terry was saying uh the more expensive the jewelry the more power it had yeah i remember that from part one yeah she was into jewelry wasn't she sure was on a constant quest to acquire expensive jewelry not saying anything i'm just saying we're not saying but we're saying Yeah. Allegedly. We need to make t-shirts that just say allegedly on them. Yeah. A few days after the murder, Jill's mom found what she called an occultic drawing on the ground outside Jill's bedroom window.

She also found a red toy robot with its head caved in and its legs torn off. Yikes. Can we say creepy? Yeah, that's pretty damn creepy. So there were several suspects in Jill's murder, mostly ex-boyfriends, some of whom were involved with conscious development, and several of whom were married. Uh-huh. One of these men, one of the ones involved with the cult, had a key and the alarm code to Jill's house. And he had once told Jill's sister that he was the beneficiary of Jill's life insurance policy.

Now, he wasn't, but he thought he was. the guy the guy behaved oddly after jill's murder according to friends of hers and he was involved with her in 1979 remember the pages ripped out of jill's journal were from that time frame but despite a thorough investigation jill's murder remains unsolved to this day her family believes her involvement with terry hoffman and conscious development got her killed yeah and i mean we have no way of knowing for sure it sounds like Jill had, for all her wonderful qualities, kind of a chaotic life and chaotic relationships and sometimes volatile relationships and that there was sometimes some violence, although it seemed to usually be coming from her, not to her.

So it could have been anything, really. But there are a few elements here that really do make me wonder if Terry and Conscious Development had its nasty little fingers in this particular pie. And one of those things is the occultic drawing. I wish we knew more about it. I wish we had a picture of it, but like, why would that be on the ground right outside the window where she was killed? Yeah. That's creepy.

And the fact that there were tarot cards scattered around, the fact that there was expensive jewelry missing. There were other things of value that were not taken, that you would think a traditional robber, you know, if it was a burglary or a home invasion or something, would take. Right. But no, but all this expensive jewelry was taken. So that to me is interesting. and yeah so who knows but to me it's it's for sure a creepy story and there are a lot of question marks especially since one of these boyfriends was involved with the cult right exactly during the year where you know where those pages were ripped out of the journal so who

knows and apparently he thought he was the beneficiary for life insurance i mean that's a red flag huge red flag but they were never able to pin it on him so you know we don't know we include it just as food for thought. So now we come to the Goodman case, and oh boy, this one. Just buckle up. So on a winter day in 1990, so a couple years after Jill Bounds' murder, police showed up to check on David and Glenda Goodman, who hadn't been seen or heard from in over a month. And as they made entry into the house, the smell that hit them was so bad that one of them

threw up on the front lawn. And so bad, in fact, that the responders had to go back and get gas masks, so they could go back into the house so not a good sign right no and when they got to the living room they were confronted with a truly bizarre scene one whole area of the living room had been converted into what looked like a firing range and this is not the garage or some outdoor area this is right in the middle of the living room and it looked like a firing range they had paper targets they had pellet guns they had a handbook for a semi-automatic pistol they had ammunition so what the hell and in front of the coffee table lay the bodies of David and Glenda

Goodman. They were lying right next to each other. There was a semi-automatic pistol or Ruger lying next to David and next to Glenda was a 22 revolver. They had each died from a gunshot wound to the head with the gun right up against their skin at the time of impact.

So absolutely point blank range and they'd been dead for weeks. And this is a weird little detail. There was an alarm clock at their feet. Oh no. Which is, isn't that creepy? creepy yeah I mean what was that there for you know the significance of that and it looked like either a double suicide or a murder suicide like either one had shot the other and then him or

herself or they had each shot themselves and it makes me wonder if the alarm clock was like we're going to set this and when it goes off we're going to go maybe or something yeah that's that's plausible yeah so anywho um this was was just baffling to a lot of the people that knew David and Glenda. They were both in their 40s. They were smart people, educated people. David had a degree from Yale, and he'd been a college professor for a while, and then he gave that up to work for himself as an investment advisor, and he was really good at it. And Glenda was his bookkeeper, so they lived together, they worked together, they were pretty much each other's world, and they were each the other's

second marriage, and they were big in love. And everything had been going great with them until you guessed it, they discovered Terry Hoffman in her big bag of bullshit. So, great. Like most people who get involved in cults, David and Glenda were introspective people, people who felt a deep need to understand things and, you know, chase after enlightenment. And at first, under Terry's guidance, they had been really thrilled at the results. They were having visions of a place they called the Purple Realm. This reminds me of the sort of extra planer lands that Terry used to do.

described to her high school disciples back before she started the cult when they would all sit around in a circle and say, oh, I see the temple. It has, you know, a capola here and a balcony here, and Terry would say, yeah, that's right, keep going, you know. So the purple realm was a place full of ornate and beautiful temples and other gorgeous scenery, you know, a place for the masters. And with Terry's help, they discovered that they were the reincarnations of Adam and Eve. The very first humans. Seems legit. And they had each lived 800,000 lives before this one.

Oh, and also, incidentally, if that wasn't enough, they weren't David and Glenda anymore. They were the Roman god and goddess Jupiter and Venus. Like you do. So it's all over the place. It's like pick, pick a... Okay, so you're Adam and Eve reincarnated, but you're also Jupiter and Venus. Like, those are two completely different religions, first of all. You know, like, we've got the Christian philosophy over here,

and then we've got the pantheon of, like, the Roman gods over here. Like I said, it's a Franken philosophy. It's just, oh, my God. And it really reminds me a lot of Dyson Koft and Linda Henning and their, like, 10,000-year-old alien human hybrid crap and alien queens and blah, blah, blah. So, and, you know, I think the reason why cult leaders do this kind of stuff is basically it's like a form of love bombing yeah it's like you're special

you're not just plain old david and glenda you're adam and eve you're jupiter and venus so i thought it was mars and venus men and women are mars that's the dumbest shit i've ever heard many from mars women are from venus just shut up already geez louise i hate that nonsense anyway so that was a little bit of a digression And what I'm trying to say is that Terry was love bombing for followers, especially the ones with money. She had said to Sandy Cleaver, when she first got involved, you're going to be a revelator. I mean, that's a heavy thing to lay on somebody who's never really felt that special. Right, right, exactly. I'm going to be a what?

You know, we're not just plain old Whitney and Katie. We're going to rescue humanity. It's very seductive. And all that is fun in games, you know, playing gods and goddesses and stuff until suddenly, you find yourself sucked into a terrifying, stressful, psychic war with evil beings known as the Black Lords. And that's when the record scratch moment comes, and this maybe isn't so much fun anymore. And Terry was telling them that it was up to them to protect heads of state who were in danger from the dark spirits, and if they didn't, the whole world was going to fall into chaos.

So now it's not just pretty temples in the purple realm, and hey, we're Adam and Eve. It's like if you don't succeed at the spiritual warfare, the world is going to collapse into chaos. Yikes. Not to mention, of course, the damage that the lords could do them personally if they didn't maintain constant vigilance. So now it's pressure, pressure, pressure, fear, fear, stress, stress. And this became their everyday lives. And again, it sounds incredibly stupid, I imagine to most of us, but to them it was real. Right.

And yeah. And as Terry always did, she isolated them from their loved ones and friends. And this was partly for them to prove their faith and loyalty to the group. But also, according to Terry, it was to protect them from negative energies. Because, you know, anybody who's not a believer has got a negative energy. It's just like Scientology with the suppressive persons. Yeah. Which I'm sure I'm as suppressive as they get.

Oh, me too. Suppressive and proud, baby. Woo! Anyway. And, you know, with the Jehovah's Witnesses. and the practice of shunning and, you know, the Amish practice of shunning. So this is something that cults, religions, sects do.

Yeah. They tell you everybody else is bad. And, you know, back to Scientology, Jen and Miss Cavage Hill, who wrote a wonderful memoir about growing in the Church of Scientology, she said that from the time she could walk, she was pretty much taught that everybody outside the cult was evil, that the outside world was evil.

And so it's like, you might not like what's happening in here, but you don't have a safe place to run to because everybody outside of this group is evil. So now for David and Glenda, it's pressure, pressure, pressure, fear, fear, inside the group. But also, they've been indoctrinated with this idea that everybody outside the group has negative energy. So where do you go? What do you do? You're just stuck. I mean, it's stressful. Yeah, you're... I would imagine... You're stuck between a rock and a hard place and you're forced to choose between two evils, right? It's the fear of the known because the black lords are known and the fear of the unknown is the world without Terry Hoffman.

How do I function again outside of this group? Yeah. Yeah. And in the case of some groups, like with Scientology, if you grow up in Scientology and you're one of the sort of hardcore, like, sea organization type culture within Scientology, you don't even know how to open a bank account. Right.

You know, and Jenna Ms. Kavich Hill talks about that, how she had no idea how to get an apartment, how to find a job, she'd spent her entire life in this insulated environment, and that keeps you there as well. But I think for David and Glenda, it was just that psychological thing of, you know, if you leave, the world is going to fall into chaos. Yeah, and it's your fault. You could go insane. You could get cancer and die. You're going to soak up all this negative energy from people who are unbelievers or whatever. It's just, they were just stuck, I think. And it was just killing them. It was. unraveling them and yet again this is a valuable currency for Terry Hoffman this isolation

and alienation they had to cut off contact with their own children who were grown with their parents just heartbreaking I mean this woman may have alienated Sandy Cleaver so completely from her own child that she killed her right so this was something this woman was very good at and it's not just Terry Hoffman it's also a group dynamic that develops in these cults yes so it's not just the leader it's the leader it's the leader that sets it in motion, but it, it functions as a system. You know, everybody in the group contributes to it. They all kind of help keep it going. It's very, very, it's the bucket of crabs theory. We were just talking about this the other day, where if you have a bucket of

crabs and one of the crabs tries to get up and get out, the other crabs will actually drag it back. Yeah, we actually have our Patreon Angel Mia to thank for telling us about that theory don't we so thank you me yeah um that's and it's it's something with that we see in a lot of different you know flavors in life like sometimes we see it in families where the rest of the family will be feeling kind of insecure that somebody has taken off and kind of left the nest and you know maybe now she now she thinks she's too good for the rest of us or whatever right and they'll try and kind of make fun of them and put them down sometimes we do it to ourselves I'm not good enough, et cetera.

But in a cult, it's very direct. You know, you can't leave. There's nothing out there but bad. So, yeah, so it's really, really unfortunate. It was just killing David and Glenda emotionally and mentally, and I'm sure they weren't the only one. And in a trash can at the scene, a detective found a crumpled up letter

that Glenda had started writing to her son. And she wrote, and again we thank reporter George Rodriguez for this direct quote. I am extremely depressed right now and would love to have the nerve to kill myself, but so far I can't get up the gumption. Which is just heartbreaking. And sadly, that had obviously changed. But oddly, the investigators didn't find a suicide note for either David or Glenda. And also, many people who commit suicide prepare things ahead of time. They'll place their pets with an animal shelter or with friends. They'll give things away. They'll get their financial affairs an order, they'll make a will, et cetera.

David and Glinda had done none of that. But their journals showed that they had in fact been planning their deaths for quite some time. According to the journals, God wanted this. Terry said so. And Terry, of course, was their

unquestioned guru. She was the one who had introduced them to each other. She had officiated at their wedding. She was their advisor in every aspect of their lives, even mundane stuff like how to decorate the house. As far as David and Glenda were concerned, Terry was God's messenger on earth. I just hate this woman so much, Katie.

I hate her so, so bad. How do you look in somebody's face and tell them, God wants you dead? Yeah, that's a special kind of evil right there. And for money? Yeah, that's the worst part. Right. Yeah. Greed is seriously powerful stuff.

Disgusting. And this is interesting, too. The journals also mentioned some little white pills that Terry was giving them. They described them as mind-altering, and they said that they allowed them to, quote, pull up into the spiritual world, which I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I imagine it's kind of like we have let go of our physical forms and we're joining with the spirit world. so obviously she's tripping them out on hallucinogens and feeding them fantasies about gods and goddesses and evil spirits and I mean I'm sure that added to the effectiveness very very much and years later as part of a lawsuit filed against Terry by one of her I'm just going to call them victims because I think that's appropriate families it came out that Terry often gave her followers ecstasy and speed by injection and she told people they were vitamin shots so heck and yikes i mean as if the emotional manipulation wasn't enough terry was really hedging her bets here you know if if you're having trouble buying into the purple realms and the gods and goddesses and the

black lords here's some drugs can you imagine the pure terror of being i really can't dozed against your will and thinking it's like whatever vitamin k shot i'm sure that it's a Exactly. It worked exactly as she thought it would work. They thought, oh, the magic is real. Yeah. You know? So, yeah, it's really disturbing. And shame on her for doing that to these people without their consent. Yeah. I mean, this isn't the first time that a cult has done the hallucinogen thing. Oh, no. Oh, no. That's a very common thing in cults. Yeah. Amshin Riccio loved their acid. In fact, they made their own. Oh, right. That's right. Yeah. That's why they did that too, didn't they? Yeah, they were involved with the Japanese mom. They would sell the mob their acid, but they weren't good at making anything else.

But that's a different story. Because the Al-Shen-Rikio, there were a lot of chemists and stuff in the cult, right? Like scientists and stuff. So I imagine they were probably making it. Yeah. Right? Yeah, that's fascinating. They made their own.

So Amshan Rikio, for listeners that don't know, is the cult that did the terrorist attack on the Tokyo subways. And they used sarin gas. Yeah, with sarin gas. Terrifying. And they made their own sarin gas. So that's why they were a bunch of chemistry nerds. Yeah, terrifying.

And it goes to show you that a lot of the people that, I mean, people want to say, oh, it's so stupid to join a cult. Yeah, these were like distinguished scientists. Oh, yeah. Very smart people. So, yeah, you can't just say, oh, you're an idiot if you join a cult. That, I think, is a dangerous road to go down because you're not understanding what it is that actually sucks people in. Right. And it's not a lack of intelligence.

No, and one of my goals with this podcast is to show it really could happen to anyone at any time. It just has to be the right set of circumstances. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, so this drug thing is not uncommon. At some point, in 1989, Terry had announced to Glenda and David that God wanted them to give Terry half their future earnings. She called it their 50-50 deal with God. Gross. Apparently, God equals Terry in this equation. And before they died, David and Glenda gave Terry over $100,000. At some point, clearly, it all became too much for them. It's a horribly sad story. Their friends believed wholeheartedly that their deaths were Terry's fault and that Terry could have either caused the suicides or stopped them with a word. Now, campers, these are the cases we've chosen to highlight here.

But there are others. All told, 16 deaths and disappearances would come to be associated with Terry Hoffman and her cult. Two of Terry's husbands committed suicide, Glenn Cooley, and Don Hoffman, as did several women closely associated with the cult. Now, I wish we had time to go into them all because each one is a fascinating story, but it would be a like, this would be like a four-part episode. Yeah, absolutely. Don Hoffman's story is especially disturbing. We can't go into much detail, but basically, he left a video suicide note saying he was terminally ill with cancer and he was choosing to end his life rather than undergo painful treatment. As with all the others, he left his entire estate to Terry. His death seems

pretty straightforward except for this. Don Hoffman didn't have cancer. When the medical examiner discovered this, Terry told his son that the Black Lords were concealing the cancer from the examiner to hurt her in the group. Oh boy, let's have a collective eye roll about that. This is absolutely one of the most disturbing things I've ever heard to convince someone they have cancer. Mm-hmm.

And it's terminal and you should just off yourself. Yep. So, okay, Terry. Said with the same tone as, okay, boomer. Don had told his family that three different doctors had confirmed his cancer. But after his death, they couldn't find a single doctor to verify this. So, Don's family sued her. They alleged that she used hypnosis, mind control,

behavior modification and manipulation of emotions to coerce John into killing himself for her own financial gain. Like I said, that seems pretty cut and dry to me. Oh, absolutely. This wasn't the first such lawsuit either. Sandy's family had sued her years earlier as well, and she was able to settle out of court. Anyway, after the Goodman's death, the Texas authorities finally launched a criminal investigation into Terry and the group. Terry's lawyer argued that Terry counseled troubled people who already were likely to be vulnerable to suicidal thoughts. The lawyer said people had given Terry gifts and left her money of their own free will,

as many church congregants do. Yeah. Here's the thing. Here's the thing, Terry. Most churches don't dose their congregants with hallucinogens and ecstasy and amphetamines and tell them that they're under attack by powerful extra planer demons. Most of the time, no. No, it's usually just more like potluck in the fellowship hall.

Maybe some punch. It's not usually ecstasy and speed. Yeah, maybe some punch and bars. Maybe you sing-along. But her lawyer said it was a witch hunt and trial by media. They literally always say that. It's just every case. It's trial by media.

Just heck off. Heck the heck off. Heck off. Trial by media. Okay. And oh my God. This is the part I'm not looking forward to telling you campers. In the end, in the end, Terry Hoffman never served a day in prison for any of the deaths or disappearances associated with her cult. Yep, not one day. But see, the thing is, like, and it's infuriating.

And I think that she absolutely should have, like, never seen daylight again. No. Because she is clearly the worst person who's ever drawn breath. But from a criminal prosecution standpoint, you've got to have proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And, like, just taking Sandy endeavor, like, how would you ever prove? Even if Terry directly said to Sandy, you should kill your kid because she's evil. And Sandy said, okay, how would you possibly prove that unless you could get Sandy to say? Right.

That's what happened. And Sandy's dead. So how could you possibly prove it? How could you, you know, Glenn Cooley, I think there's a solid chance that she murdered him and that he didn't actually commit suicide. But how would you prove it? You know, you got to have proof. Yeah. And they just didn't have it, unfortunately.

No. No, it sucks because at some point, adults have to be responsible for their own actions, even if they're being manipulated. But it sucks. It sucks. So there is kind of a light at the end of the tunnel. It's like a blinking neon light, if it is a light. She did serve a year for bankruptcy fraud in 1994. Yeah, goody.

Big who. That's like a purse light. That's the strength of the light at the end of the tunnel that that is. It's like one of those little LED lights that you put at the bottom of your purse so you can find your mince. So, big whoop, right? It should have been a lot more than that. Yeah, and the battery's dying and the light.

It's just bad. It's all bad. Exactly. It's like it's a crappy little. It's a firefly's butt at the end of the tunnel. So at least she did, and she was sentenced to 16 months, and she ended up doing, like, 12. So she didn't even do her full 16 months sentence. It's just infuriating.

So I think she did die poor, if I remember rightly. So at least there's that. There's that. Because I'm sure she was probably scared her of that than prison. Right. Yeah, I think that's probably the best consequence for her actions. But that's the story, campers. Scary, no?

It's a good reminder to think for yourself and not let yourself get sucked in by a powerful personality. Damn right. I hope you've enjoyed this one. You know we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we can get together again around the true crime campfire. And we want to give a special shout out to a few of our new patrons. Thank you so much to September, Beth, and Karen. We love you.

And to Sarriott and Peggy, too. And to our buddy Callie, we hope you're feeling better, darling. We appreciate you all so much. You can follow us on Twitter at TC Campfire, Instagram at True Crime Campfire, and be sure to like our Facebook page. If you want to support the show and get access to extras, please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash true crime campfire.