[ Indistinct chanting ]
**
-I grew up on a Hare Krishna commune.
It was called New Vrindaban.
**
-It was an enchanting, magical land.
A beautiful, poetic picture of spirituality.
But I suffered a lot in life because my family was destroyed.
**
-It's supposed to be a kind of heaven on Earth.
The goings-on have been anything but angelic.
**
-What most Americans think when they hear "Hare Krishna"
is devotees dancing in the street.
These are the people in the robes.
They're kind of monks. They're kind of Buddhists.
People think we're some religious cult
in the sense that we all dressed a certain way,
we had a certain mindset.
But it's all about spreading the teachings of Krishna.
There's a soul within everything.
Devotees are supposed to be kind-hearted.
They're supposed to even invite your enemy into your home.
**
[ Gunshots ]
Nothing about making someone disappear.
-One of the disciples took
that really sweet, early Hare Krishna message,
and he dirtied it.
**
-This world is a sick place.
This is the place of the fallen, or the conditioned souls.
And it is the place for reformation.
-Kirtanananda Swami, Keith Ham,
wanted to take over the movement,
started issuing all these orders
to the point of engaging in the worst kind of abuse.
-The sexual transgressions, the violence...
the illogical application of the traditional philosophies.
-Rape, torture, and brainwashing they allege they endured...
[ Thunder rumbling ]
-And even now, even after years, it's chilling.
They killed my father.
**
-Surely, you weren't afraid that Hare Krishnas would murder you?
-Surely, I was.
**
-He was like the god.
If you did go against Keith Ham...
we didn't hear from you again.
**
[ Thunder rumbling ]
-When you get to be an old policeman,
you can't carry your cases with you forever,
or you won't live very long.
But this is the case that's probably gonna be with me
the rest of my life.
**
I'm Detective Sergeant Tom Westfall
of the Marshall County Sheriff's Department,
Marshall County, West Virginia.
Through no fault of my own,
I became known as the "Krishna Cop."
What was happening at New Vrindaban
actually did follow what the definition of a cult is.
Devotees were told that people wanted to harm them,
people hated them.
The devotees had their trust in a really aggressive personality,
Keith Ham.
He was the one that would save them and protect them
and lead them in their spiritual quest.
But none of them expected to be in the middle of murders.
**
The irony of the case was that Krishna consciousness --
You know, it's non-material and it's nonviolent.
It is a real religion,
and if we followed all of the rules,
it would be such a wonderful world.
[ Indistinct singing ]
-It's called the Hare Krishna movement.
A colorful group often seen
dancing and chanting in the street.
-Prabhupada was the charismatic leader,
an elderly, saintly person from India.
The closest thing that anybody had seen seen,
say, to Jesus Christ.
Prabhupada didn't invent Krishna consciousness,
which is thousands of years old.
But Prabhupada invented novel ways
to attract people to the Hare Krishna movement.
**
-Krishna consciousness was born in '60s America.
I call this "the perfect window in time."
**
Vietnam...
civil-rights violence...
President Kennedy assassinated...
and millions of young Americans looking for life's answer.
-There was great hopefulness
in the beginning of the hippie development.
Our slogan was "Love and peace, brother,
love and peace, sister."
-In the face of all this ugliness,
the hippie movement led to psychedelics
as a way to experience that there is another reality,
there is another way to see things.
-But there was a lot of ugliness creeping in.
A lot of the drugs were starting to feel and taste
and look just like all the stuff
we were trying to get away from, actually.
And then Prabhupada stepped in.
-* Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna *
[ Indistinct singing ]
-What drew people to him was music.
The whole philosophy is based
on the chanting of transcendental sounds.
-He knew that he had the formula to help them stay high forever.
-"Stay high forever."
-"No more coming down."
Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna.
-Krishna, Krishna. -Krishna, Krishna.
Hare, Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama.
Rama, Rama, Hare, Hare.
-Translated, that means, "God and God's energy,
please engage me in service to you."
[ Indistinct chanting ]
When we were chanting
and at the same time passing out food,
that was a recruiting tool.
And they'd come in, hundreds and hundreds of people.
[ Indistinct chanting ]
-He always said the only way
peace will prevail on this planet
is when the actions of humankind revolve around the love of God.
And his goal was clear --
to change the world.
[ Indistinct chanting ]
We gave up drugs...
and we got hooked on the Swami.
-We never saw him as somebody not to be trusted.
He was not a cheater...
in a world of cheating and disappointment.
There was implicit trust and faith in him.
**
-We not only trust him, we give up everything.
I gave up a school scholarship. I gave up my home, my family.
And I joined the Hare Krishnas.
-But there were certain rules and regulations.
No intoxication of any sorts.
No more weed. No more LSD. Nothing.
-Not even coffee or tea.
-...barbecue sauce...
-No meat eating. -No gambling.
Mental speculation. Like, even the stock market.
-And no more illicit sex.
-So no sex outside of marriage.
-Well, that was a big one.
So it presented challenges.
After I left medical school, at the time of initiation,
they would shave our head, shave our mustaches and beard,
and it would be more of a monastic look.
Then Prabhupada changed all of our names
from a Western name to a more mystical, spiritual name.
So I went from Bill to Bhagavan.
[ Cheering ]
That helps you rebirth yourself.
Your first birth by biological parents,
your second birth by your spiritual mentor.
[ Indistinct chanting ]
-But when you get young, immature people,
you're going to get a certain percentage of people
who are just wired for trouble.
**
-One of Prabhupada's very first disciples was Keith Ham,
who became Kirtanananda.
Kirtanananda came from a Baptist preacher family.
He had a pretty vast intelligence.
But your intelligence can tie you up in knots, too.
-He dropped out of a doctoral program in history,
but he had a real work ethic.
I mean, he was just work, work, work.
So he was the first disciple of Prabhupada
to take Sannyasi, which he did in 1967.
And so he was, like, the only Sannyasi
besides Prabhupada in the Hare Krishna movement,
which gave him this great status.
But I knew from the very beginning
his maybe two most characteristic features
were ability and ambition.
-He was like a dominator.
He wasn't...a uniter.
Prabhupada worked with him and held all of us together.
**
So peak growth occurred because he was here.
[ Indistinct chanting ]
-This was our first coup d'état.
Srila Prabhupada and Krishna consciousness
come west.
-In those days, I had close friends
in the emerging music world,
so I asked around,
and the Mantra-Rock concert was born.
[ Rock music plays ]
-Prabhupada flew out to San Francisco.
Allen Ginsberg was there.
-Big Brother and the Holding Company,
a.k.a. Janis Joplin.
-My friend Jerry Garcia said
that the Grateful Dead would play.
The Swami showed up
and led more than a thousand hippies
in the "Hare Krishna" mantra.
-So that blew up the whole West Coast/San Francisco scene.
And then the devotees went to England.
-We were thinking
if the Beatles start chanting "Hare Krishna,"
that will get the attention of the whole world,
and the whole world will chant "Hare Krishna."
You know, Prabhupada --
If there was a spark, he'd fan it.
**
-We went down to the Apple office.
One of our tricks we pulled
was we made an apple pie and sent it down
with "Hare Krishna" inscribed in the surface.
And then we got invited to the Apple Christmas party.
George sat down across the table from me and he said,
"Where have you been? I've been waiting to meet you."
And that started our lifelong friendship.
By May and June, a few of us were living with George.
And George was like Prabhupada's favorite son.
[ Typewriter clacking ]
**
One morning, George started singing this wild gospel melody.
* Hallelujah *
So I start yelling...
* Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna *
And it just sort of blended in
and became part of the ultimate song.
"My Sweet Lord"
was one of the greatest-selling songs of all time.
-Everything happened from there.
-That was huge growth.
Everyone had the momentum
of propagating the mission of the movement,
which was to spread,
proselytizing the tradition that we were in.
-I mean, we were so naive back then.
And then inevitably some very bad things did happen
within the Hare Krishna movement.
Unfortunately, when Prabhupada
met George Harrison and the Beatles,
that triggered Keith Ham because he became jealous
of what was going on in England.
And so he tried to take over the movement.
**
-Those of us who were early devotees,
we already knew this guy Kirtanananda had this --
what I would call a renegade propensity.
Declared that he was the successor to God
who can cheat people and lie and steal and even murder
because it's all for the higher cause.
Kirtanananda was ambitious, and he saw --
"Here's an opportunity.
Maybe I can take advantage of this movement."
-The major reason really that you can say why things expanded
was that Prabhupada at his late age
never stopped traveling.
We were building the temples, and Prabhupada had a directive
of how he wanted the society to run.
The official organization was the International Society
for Krishna Consciousness -- ISKCON.
Kirtanananda was seen within ISKCON
as a free radical.
-As a Sannyasi, which was, like, kind of like
God on Earth in those days.
Kirtanananda, son of a Baptist minister.
He said that Prabhupada --
"Yeah, he's real nice and everything,
but you know he doesn't understand about our culture."
-He didn't like the way Prabhupada wanted us
to dress in Indian robes.
Kirtanananda wanted us to dress in suit-and-tie.
And then at one point, Kirtanananda stole
Prabhupada's "Bhagavad Gita" manuscript.
He went to some publisher and he said,
"I'm the author of this book."
He was trying to take credit for Prabhupada's work,
and they just didn't believe him.
-Prabhupada heard about it, then Prabhupada
started writing letters saying that, you know,
"Unfortunately, our Kirtanananda has gone crazy."
[ Typewriter clacking ]
-"Kirtanananda is a crazy man.
Maybe we should get him into Bellevue."
-He sort of went to war with Prabhupada.
And Prabhupada, of course, won
because his disciples were loyal to him.
-The devotees were spitting on Kirtanananda.
They were so upset with him.
-For the next year or so, he was really --
He was outside the Hare Krishna movement,
sort of persona non grata.
-But he had caught on to one of Prabhupada's plans,
which was to have farm communities.
**
-Kirtanananda decided to start a community
in the West Virginia Panhandle.
It not only was the West Virginia Panhandle,
but it was, like, remote even for the Panhandle.
And then he started to develop New Vrindaban commune.
**
-The creation myth, in terms of how the Hare Krishnas
ended up with a foothold in West Virginia,
begins with an ad in the "San Francisco Oracle."
Richard Rose puts an ad in the "Oracle" in 1968
saying that he is looking to start
a "non-denominational" spiritual ashram.
-Had an idea about setting up a philosophic center,
a place where people could come without charge,
without obligation, without being brainwashed.
-It was about 130 acres,
and my father was looking for someone
that he hoped was like-minded in his philosophical pursuits
to come out and lease that property from him
and take care of it.
-Keith Ham said, "We were formerly members
of the Hare Krishna community," but they were disaffected,
and, "We want to start
a non-dogmatic spiritual ashram, as well."
So it was a 99-year lease,
and basically it was -- you pay the taxes
and have a non-dogmatic spiritual community,
and it's yours.
As soon as the lease was signed,
they put on bed sheets and started chanting.
-When I started being a deputy sheriff in Marshall County,
I drove down just to see what it was.
They were going to have a farm and they were going to build it
into a Krishna center,
and he hoped to redeem himself in the eyes of Prabhupada.
[ Indistinct chanting, rhythmic drums playing ]
**
Prabhupada came to visit the farm,
and even though it was very primitive,
he approved of it and he accepted Kirtanananda
back into the fold.
-Prabhupada saw his disciples as his children.
-Prabhupada encouraged the New Vrindaban project,
but Prabhupada was being very merciful
because he was trying to get something going
with whatever tools he had in the toolbox,
which weren't very good tools.
[ Laughs ]
[ Typewriter clacking ]
**
-We soon found out that it wasn't going to be
just a couple of folks,
that there were more people coming
and that they embraced a holistic lifestyle
that was attractive to a lot of younger folks.
**
They would publicize that,
and there would be promotions to bring people out here.
-Devotees serve Krishna
according to their special propensities.
We do not need liquor shops, gambling clubs,
slaughterhouses, or brothels.
-I simply want that you should live simply,
chant, "Hare Krishna," have no worries, and be happy.
**
-My experience with Kirtanananda is that he --
he had a way of dealing with people
that he would make you feel like
you wanted to do things for him or to help him.
When I first met Kirtanananda,
he was talking about how great New Vrindaban was.
My boyfriend at that time, we had very little money,
so we were thinking this would be
a really nice place to move to.
"Let's go there. It's a farm."
Um, was I 15? 16.
**
My dad and mom were alcoholics.
I was actually an alcoholic before I joined the Krishnas.
14 years old, I was drinking like a fish.
A lot of people's experience with their parents,
telling them that, "I'm going to join the Krishnas,"
they were freaked out.
I said, "They don't drink, smoke, take drugs,
or have sex or anything.
You know, they live a clean life."
She said, "I think that'd be a great idea."
[ Laughs ] She was so happy.
'Cause I was completely wild back then.
**
-Devotees were recruited to come there.
They were told that it was going to be a pastoral,
non-material lifestyle.
When they got there, they found out that it was really a slum.
Some of the people lived in lean-tos.
Some lived in old cars.
There was a farm building
and a couple of ramshackle houses
that were off in the other parts of the property.
So life was pretty difficult there.
-When I would go to New Vrindaban,
the unhealthy psychology was sort of palpable
because Kirtanananda, you know, was a big spiritual leader,
but he just wasn't a normal person.
He wasn't, like, a nice guy.
His mood, his psychology permeated everything.
And then it got worse.
[ Thunder rumbles ]
-What it was first like when I went there
was pretty rough.
We slept in the barn with the cows.
[ Chuckles ]
It was pretty rough. There wasn't very much space
for anybody to sleep or do anything.
You were real redneck devotees.
**
-It was just a mud hole.
You know, they were doing a lot of construction out there,
and it was amateur hour.
I mean, you're talking about
young people that were in their 20s,
and I don't think they really knew what they were doing
or how they were supposed to do it,
and the sewage system was completely inadequate.
Of course, they would defecate along the road.
I mean, the stench was overwhelming
when you would pass by.
-Now, I had a cabin close to it.
They were just bad neighbors.
The chanting just never stopped.
It was just on the loudspeaker.
And I learned to meditate
through "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna,
Hare Rama, Hare Rama."
**
-We kept mostly cloistered. You know?
It was like mostly kept to ourselves.
But their view of us, I know as a fact,
was like we were a cult.
You know, a baby-killing cult or something. Bunch of crazies.
-They just don't act like
a normal group of people ought to.
-We were a little shocked and aggrieved
that some of our neighbors felt this way.
We've tried many times to invite all of our neighbors
to come and see us, talk to us,
see firsthand what we're doing,
and they don't seem to want to come.
**
-I think it's wrong to denigrate people
who are attracted to things like the Hare Krishna religion.
The devotees came to New Vrindaban,
and they weren't stupid.
What they were is they were hopeful.
**
-I was born in Southern California.
I was the black sheep of the family,
and I was just longing to...
be different...
like the cool hippie kids.
I was hitchhiking across the country,
and I got as far as Boulder, Colorado,
and I went into the university there.
And the first thing I saw
were these guys in orange robes and shaved heads.
And I just went, "Wow! Spiritual energy."
And I just got...sucked in.
**
They were trying to convince me to come and stay with them.
They kept saying, "You never know what something's like
until you come live it."
And so I promised that I would stay for six months.
And they promised that if I didn't like it
after six months, I could leave.
So I went with them...
and, um...
didn't get out for 11 years.
**
Well, New Vrindaban had this aura of some kind of mystique.
Part of me was scared to death. Part of me was kind of excited.
I brought what little I had into my living quarters,
which happened to be above the cows in the barn.
[ Cows mooing ]
And the first thing I had to do
was learn how to wash the walls with cow urine.
Pretty stinky job.
But it was believed that the cow urine was antiseptic,
and so that's how we're going to clean things.
The food was a shock.
This brown, gooey substance
served on the floor on a piece of wax paper.
It was very, very cold.
We took our showers outside.
We were allowed about a gallon of hot water a day.
You could traipse across the snow
into this little enclosure,
pour your hot water over your head,
and your feet are being frozen to the boards underneath.
There were families living in very small rooms with no heat,
so children were going to bed in snowsuits and mittens.
There were times when I really, really wanted to leave,
but I had made this promise to stay for six months.
And by the end of that six months, I was brainwashed.
I was there. I was in.
I had quite a bit of respect for Keith Ham.
He was our spiritual leader.
-We look a little different. We dress a little different.
-He was always in this really soothing
and calm way of talking to you, you know?
But you could see the wheels turning in his head.
Manipulative. Power-hungry.
He was the devil incarnate, really.
-Krishna Consciousness.
It is one of many groups that have grown
with the big religious revival among many young Americans.
-The rapid expansion of the movement came
as Prabhupada started pushing book production.
Literally millions of books were going out.
We opened up temples in London, Paris, Amsterdam.
Chanting in all the major cities in the world.
-There was a time earlier
where everyone knew Prabhupada, Prabhupada knew everyone.
But the movement grew so fast
that it was just humanly impossible.
Prabhupada could no longer really keep track of everything.
And Kirtanananda was extremely competitive.
He wanted to build Prabhupada's palace.
**
-Keith Ham was going to build New Vrindaban
into the center of Krishna Consciousness
in the United States.
The goal was to build a huge palace
called the Palace of Gold.
Kirtanananda would always say that it was going to be
where Prabhupada lived, but he had to know
that Prabhupada likely would not be alive
by the time that the palace was finished
and that was going to be his palace
and he would be the ruler.
-Kirtanananda just wanted labor. He wanted workers.
So it was understood
that if you had someone in the temple
who was a little crazy,
you would give them a bus ticket to New Vrindaban.
-As the community grew,
I started building a database of who was there.
And one of the people that caught my attention early on
was a man named Thomas Drescher.
-There was just this strange aura about him.
You'd just get this feeling that something's just not right.
-He served in Vietnam. He had two Purple Hearts.
He was no stranger to violence.
Drescher had a criminal record
before he ever came to New Vrindaban.
A lot of situations where violence was used.
And he clearly was a very unusual person
to be at a Hare Krishna farm.
It wasn't too long before we started having
some incidents out there.
-What were the circumstances that led to the shooting?
-I was giving a class in our temple,
and I heard these mutterings that men had returned with guns
and they said they were looking for their daughter
who supposedly came here.
She was underage, and they wanted her back.
-Everybody denied that his daughter was there,
but the next morning they came back
and one of them was carrying a shotgun.
There was a scuffle, and the shotgun went off.
The two men fled without the girl.
Myself and two deputies showed up,
and we were trying to make sense of what had happened out there.
There were three or four devotees who had minor injuries.
I think only one went to the hospital.
When the media showed up, Keith Ham --
he told a completely different story than what had happened.
-How many people came back today?
-I think there were five, possibly six.
-What were they armed with?
-Shotguns. Pistols. Semiautomatic rifle.
-He told a story about a place
being invaded by a motorcycle gang
and how he risked his life
to fight for -- to protect the altar.
And the guns were flying. There were machine guns.
It just went into a crazy exaggeration.
-Do you think they were shooting to kill anyone?
-They didn't care. They looked absolutely crazy.
-Kirtanananda Swami had his own script
that he was going to go by,
and the devotees were just players in the game.
-It was very traumatizing. I wasn't there, so I can't --
I'm just going from what he said, but...
They, you know, shot some devotees,
and they took Kirtanananda up a hill and said,
"We're going to shoot you."
-It was just absurd to claim that,
but he would claim that for decades to come --
he was the man who stood up to a motorcycle gang
and defended the Krishna religion.
-The Hare Krishna members
are now making sandbag bunkers to protect themselves,
and they say that they will take steps
to prevent a further occurrence of this type.
-That was a turning point.
Because that's when New Vrindaban really started
to become militant.
Like, they armed themselves. They had target practice.
And it was kind of like, "Never again.
The next time they come, we'll blow their heads off."
**
-Keith Ham -- he had to convince them
that he was the savior, not their parents,
not the police, not the outside world.
Because you have to convince your followers
that you are the safety
and the rest of the world is the danger.
Thomas Drescher found a place in the Hare Krishna scripture
that said he could exist
as a personal guard to Kirtanananda.
-I think that was a key historical moment.
Because you have a narcissistic leader,
but now it's becoming more militant.
**
-In the '70s, we were getting people
from all walks of life.
Up in the Bay Area,
Steve Jobs was working out of his garage
as a starving technician,
and he would come to the temple.
So people are joining. People are having a good time.
Prabhupada brought the enthusiasm
to make the world a better place for everybody.
But as much as he would stress growth,
he would stress that, "I'm only here temporarily."
He went through a period of being physically ill.
His passing was imminent.
-We'd been taught from the beginning
he wouldn't always be with us.
But it didn't take away the pain.
-Everyone was always wondering
what happens after Prabhupada passes away.
It was only when we actually saw him gone
that the full weight of what happened --
that we've lost the charismatic leader.
And what do we do now?
On his deathbed, he said,
"I will name some of you to be gurus."
**
When we take that mantle of guru
and you have your own disciples,
there's this struggle within yourself.
"Do I have enough spiritual resources
to try to take on that mantle?"
That's a learning curve
that Prabhupada took his whole life to get to.
-He was really worried about ISKCON
just sort of disintegrating
because when his guru left this world,
the movement that he joined did disintegrate,
and it disintegrated precisely because
they hadn't worked out the management
and people wanted power.
So Prabhupada went through this trauma
of seeing a spiritual movement to which he dedicated his life
just self-destruct.
And he was determined that that wouldn't happen with ISKCON.
I literally got a letter in the mail,
and suddenly I was a guru.
I didn't feel I was ready.
I was 29 years old.
Now suddenly God on Earth.
-You couldn't help at that time to wonder
why some were picked and some weren't picked.
-You have these young, immature people
suddenly acquiring
this absolute power over other human beings.
**
Always reminds me of this "Three Stooges" episode
where Moe played Hitler with a little mustache,
and they're, like, dividing the globe up.
-I am the winner! The world belongs to me!
Give it to me! -No, it's mine!
-So we, the ones that he named,
tried as we best knew how to be a living teacher.
But there was philosophical infighting,
you could call it.
-This world is a sick place.
This is the place of the fallen, or the conditioned souls.
And it is the place for reformation.
-We were left to deal with an ego
having no restrictor plates on it
because Prabhupada was gone.
Kirtanananda saw himself as the center of everything,
and then Prabhupada became something
that he could use
for his own self-aggrandizement.
**
-Way back in the early days,
Kirtanananda was down-to-earth
and more like one of us.
And as time went on,
he became more and more intense and authoritarian.
-Kirtanananda absolutely had this vision.
You know, he was the one. He was the messiah.
"You're not gonna save the world.
I'm gonna save the world."
Kirtanananda, who was triggered by all this power --
he not only has these dark ideas in his head,
but he actually has the power to carry out his fantasies.
[ Telephone rings ]
-A few years later, devotees would call and say,
"We're treated badly, and if you try to leave,
Kirtanananda won't give you your possessions or wallets."
You might even get beat up if you say, "I'm going to leave."
And there were some bullies on the farm
that would push them around.
And the one in particular that they talked about
was Thomas Drescher.
And one of the people that didn't like him
was Charles St. Denis.
-My father was Chakradara. Charles St. Denis by birth.
And he was a very tall man,
very jolly, very cheerful.
At the same time, very straightforward, fearless.
Because he had a broken family,
he had left home at a quite young age.
I think my father was 17, 18
when he became involved with the Krishnas.
-He was very charismatic. People liked him.
He was the light in the community.
-A hard worker.
He was just so capable.
There was no way a leader could really avoid
using him and relying on him.
Keith Ham would always drive over in his Land Cruiser,
and my father would sit in the car with him,
and they'd be doing their, you know,
managerial talk or whatever it was, you know?
And I was like, "Oh, my dad's pretty important here, yeah."
Up until then, it's just this beautiful,
wonderful place and experience.
And suddenly everything changed for me.
-So, there was a point there
where my dad got a big inheritance.
And instead of giving this money to the temple,
they used that money to buy a big --
I think it was 40-acres property next to the community.
That was kind of the beginning of the resentment
with Kirtanananda and my dad.
Our dad keeping all that money,
Kirtanananda didn't like that.
He didn't like that individuality.
He wanted, you know, soldiers.
He wanted people that are going to be working for him.
-Where they were located was on the fringe
of the physical area of the community.
My father and a lot of the other devotees
who lived in that area may have kept long hair.
Some of them drank. Some of them smoked marijuana.
-I ran into him once in a convenience store
when he was buying a case of Molson Ale.
I said, "Chuck, what -- Is this for the Lord?"
And he said, "It is tonight."
Charles made an enemy of the Swami.
So there was more than one incident
where Swami would see Charles St. Denis
and he would talk to him about his conduct.
He called out St. Denis for not following the tenets
and not wearing the clothes, not shaving his head,
drinking beer, smoking marijuana, et cetera.
And at one point, he did that in front of people
where Charles St. Denis called him a hypocrite.
-We had these things called darshans,
and "darshan" literally means "vision,"
but it was a term that was used
when we would have time, personal time with the guru.
And during one of these darshans,
my father publicly accused Kirtanananda.
-Charles St. Denis called him a hypocrite.
"You've collected all this money.
You drive around in a stretch Cadillac limousine.
But I know what your behavior is.
Many know your behavior.
You're the pot calling the kettle black."
**
What St. Denis was referring to
was that there was a constant rumor
that Kirtanananda Swami was pretty sexually active
with some of the men on the farm.
-There was a number of laborers who were brought there to work.
My father had heard --
And maybe he observed something. I don't know.
But he was definitely speaking publicly.
He said Kirtanananda was having sex with these workers
while still playing this role of being a valid, celibate guru.
-Sannyasi is sort of like the spiritual leader in the society.
It's sort of like a Catholic monk where you're celibate.
-He made a confrontation,
pointing to hypocrisy like a double personality.
My father complaining directly and publicly
about Kirtanananda's immoral activities
definitely created a large rift
between them from that time on.
-Swami Kirtanananda, with all of his obedient devotees,
was not going to tolerate that kind of disrespect,
and that might have been something that helped Swami
make the decision that, "I want St. Denis taken care of."
**
-Keith Ham gets credit for altering
a lot of people's lives,
but most of those people were the devotees
who followed him around and ended up committing crimes
and having crimes committed against them.
And one of those people was a devotee named Dan Reid.
Dan Reid was a bookkeeper. He was a little guy.
He was kind of a mousy guy, but he was very quiet.
I mean, he didn't have a great physical presence.
-Dan Reid, Daruka, was my father's friend,
and his eldest son was my best friend.
Our families were very friendly,
knew each other very well, spent time together often.
My father's relationship with Daruka, Dan Reid,
was complicated.
His wife and my father had an affair.
I had my firsthand experience of that fact
when me and my father were driving around.
My father parked his Bronco up top of this hill
and put me to sleep there.
When I woke up, I woke up because the car was shaking,
and it was, like, my dad and her on the hood of the car.
You know, what did I know?
But I'm sure you know. [ Chuckles ]
Daruka was claiming that my father had raped his wife.
Everybody knew that it wasn't rape.
-But Dan Reid clung to the idea
that he forced her to have sex with him.
And that wasn't true.
Dan Reid, he couldn't deal with it.
-So, it was late in the night.
My father got a call from Dan Reid
to come out to his house and have a good time.
**
-Dan Reid called and said,
"Chakra, let's bury the hatchet."
**
Chakra had told his wife,
"I'm going to Dan Reid's place and we're gonna drink some beer
and, you know, smoke some weed."
**
Charles St. Denis was very well-known as somebody
who always had a little bit of marijuana
and didn't mind selling it.
Charles St. Denis didn't know
as he drove up to Dan Reid's house
that Thomas Drescher was also in there.
**
Well, the next day,
his wife realized that Chakra wasn't there.
She went down to Reid's house and asked Dan Reid,
"Have you seen Chakra?"
He said, "I don't know. Why would you ask me?
I don't know where he is."
She didn't know what happened, and that's when eventually
she would come to the sheriff's department
and report that her husband was missing.
**
St. Denis was nowhere to be found,
and she knew that something was wrong.
[ Telephone rings ]
One afternoon, about 3:30, I got a phone call.
It was Deborah Gere. She was crying.
And she said, "Sergeant Westfall,
Chakra is gone.
Something's happened to him.
I'm afraid that Thomas Drescher
may have done something to my husband."
And I believed her, but I knew as she walked out the door --
One of the other deputies walked into my office
and he said, "What was that about?"
I said, "I think that's a widow right there."
-We're up in the mountains of West Virginia.
Once Kirtanananda got you out there, you weren't leaving.
He went from being one of the gurus
that were practicing what Prabhupada taught...
to turning it into his own religion.
-They needed money for New Vrindaban.
They needed money to keep Kirtanananda's lifestyle up.
-To build a city on the hill,
they use sort of ruthless means.
**
-A lot of us went through hell.
We sacrificed a lot. Especially women.
-I finally just decided,
"My kids are going to have Mommy dead,
Mommy in an insane asylum somewhere,
or Mommy out trying to make it in the world
to give them a safe home."
**
-Just like the Mob. You can't have a snitch.
[ Gunshots ]
**