[ Ominous music plays ]
**
-My father told my mother about
these ongoing dreams he was having.
He would be under a starry sky
at a campfire
with an elder person.
And this elder wise person told him,
"You're going to be murdered
by enemies in the guise of friends."
[ Gunshot ]
And this elder wise person
would pick up pieces of wood
from the stack of wood he had there
and place those into the fire.
**
And every time he would have this dream again,
there was less wood.
And it was understood by my father
that once that wood would be all burned...
**
...his time would be up.
**
He knew.
**
[ Indistinct chanting ]
**
-May I ask you how you feel
when someone bows down on the ground in front of you?
-That is not meant for me.
That is meant for -- for God.
-The new Vrindaban, Kirtanananda, Keith Ham --
he wanted to make New Vrindaban
the glory of the Hare Krishna movement.
He was a big guru, you know. He was God on Earth.
You know, there's a certain dictator psychology.
It was never...normal.
-Kirtanananda, or Keith Ham --
God, I just remember him being larger than life.
You lived and breathed Kirtanananda
and serving Kirtanananda.
That was your life.
People just sitting at his feet,
worshipping his feet, giving him money,
giving him gifts.
And I just remember looking up and just being like,
"Oh, the man is so great. He's so wonderful. He's God."
-He went from being one of the gurus
that were practicing what Prabhupada taught
and getting the movement out there
to turning it into his own religion.
But he also chose
a super-isolated part of the country.
You were up in the mountains of West Virginia,
surrounded by woods.
Once Kirtanananda got you out there,
once he got his clutches into you and got you out there,
you weren't leaving.
[ Mid-tempo music playing ]
-If you look at political dictators,
you can worship the state or you can say you're worshipping God,
but there's a lot of shared psychology, I think.
So criticizing Kirtanananda and all that was intolerable.
It's Kirtanananda.
**
-My father was Chakradara,
and Charles St. Denis by birth.
And, yeah, he was very jolly, very cheerful,
at the same time very straightforward, fearless.
And he had a conflict with Kirtanananda.
Part of his leadership position is that he's a celibate,
he's pure, and so on.
But my father had heard,
and maybe he observed something -- I don't know --
but I know he was speaking openly
that you may be portraying yourself to be a pure person,
a pure devotee of Krishna,
but you're engaged in immoral activities
such as having sex with workers
while still playing this role of being avowed celibate guru.
-Chakra called him a hypocrite.
You've collected all this money.
You drive around in a stretch Cadillac limousine.
Charles made an enemy of the Swami.
His wife called me one day.
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.
Thomas Drescher would be a pretty imposing,
scary kind of guy.
He took to the role of being a bully, and he liked it.
And Kirtanananda -- he enjoyed having him.
He was like his personal protection.
But what I learned is that it all started with Dan Reid.
-Dan Reid, Daruka, was my father's friend.
Our families were very friendly,
knew each other very well, spent time together often.
My father's relationship with Dan Reid was complicated.
His wife and my father had an affair.
-Dan Reid suspected that his wife had had sex
with Charles St. Denis.
It was too much for him.
He told Kirtanananda,
"Charles St. Denis had sex with my wife,
and it's embarrassing for me.
And I want you to do something about it."
Kirtanananda told Dan Reid,
"Get Tirtha," which was Thomas Drescher's name.
"Tell Tirtha that I told him
to take care of Charles St. Denis."
So Drescher went to see Kirtanananda Swami and said,
"You want me to take care of Charles St. Denis?"
He waved his hand and Drescher said,
"A wave of your hand is not good enough.
Do you want me to kill Charles St. Denis?"
He said, "Yes."
[ Telephone rings ]
Dan Reid called and said,
"Chakra, let's bury the hatchet."
Charles St. Denis told his wife,
"I'm going to Dan Reid's place."
He didn't know
that Thomas Drescher was also in there.
And she never heard from him again.
**
[ Man chanting indistinctly ]
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?"
And he said, "I don't know. Why would you ask me?"
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.
She had gone to the point of hiring an airplane
to fly over the entire community
so she could see where his vehicle was.
**
A friend of Charles' called on the phone, and he said,
"Charles's car is sitting a block down from the house,"
but he said he hasn't -- he hasn't seen anything of --
of Chakra.
We went over the vehicle.
We didn't see any evidence of a struggle
or any visible evidence of blood.
And it didn't lead us to any more of a conclusion.
But as I went back to my office,
I was thinking, "This is not a good situation."
There was a good chance we were never gonna see
Charles St. Denis again.
And as time went on, he didn't contact Deborah.
No one had any contact with him.
So I came to believe, just as Deborah did,
that he was probably killed.
But nobody was really listening because we didn't have a body.
I went out to the farm over the next few days,
and I would talk to devotees.
Devotees who used to talk to me
and look me in the eye would look away and say,
"No, we think he's probably just -- he left her.
He went to California. He's away.
He's on some trip or something."
When I approached Dan Reid
and asked him about the situation,
I thought Dan Reid was gonna faint.
His face was completely white. He was sweating.
His hands -- he was wringing his hands.
And I would say, "Well, where is he?"
And he would say, "I don't have any idea.
I don't know."
Not more than three hours after I left,
he headed for California.
But Kirtanananda was on the road.
I pulled up beside him and I said,
"Hear anything about Charles St. Denis?"
And he said, "Charles St. Denis --
He's gone to California. Everybody knows that."
And I said, "Ah, he never left here, Swami.
He never left here."
I think there was an undercurrent of people
who did believe that Charles St. Denis
had been killed by the Swami.
I came to believe that he was probably killed
and that Thomas Drescher had something to do with it.
-I didn't know anything at the time,
but there was a request that came from my mother
for me to come to her room,
and she didn't speak immediately.
She took time, perhaps composing her words,
and then kind of abruptly saying,
"He's gone. Your father is gone."
She told me right there she believed
that Dan Reid and Tirtha, Thomas Drescher,
had killed my father.
And even as I remember it now,
even after years of going through this,
it's chilling.
And I started talking to my schoolmates about it.
"Hey, did you know this happened to me?"
You know, like, "Tirtha and Daruka killed my dad."
The teachers overheard what I was saying.
And they announced to us that
my father had suddenly left town.
He had gone on vacation.
And I was confident that what my mother told me was the truth
and I just said, "No, Tirtha and Daruka killed my father.
I know."
Boy, they grabbed me,
took me into the side room,
and beat the shit out of me.
Slapped me, kicked me, pushed me around.
I was crying.
My cheeks were burning, like, real hot.
I was arguing that, "No, they murdered my father.
My father's dead."
"No, he's not. He's just on vacation."
And shook me about and threw me on the ground
until I agreed and repeated back to them,
"Okay, he's gone. He's just gone on vacation."
"Say it again." "Yes, he's just on vacation."
"Good."
Until I got that real straight,
they basically kept beating me.
Before my father was killed, I wasn't afraid of anybody
'cause my father was big and strong.
But from that time on, it was very clear
that I was just open game.
**
[ Man chanting indistinctly ]
-With the Charles St. Denis murder,
nobody was really listening because we didn't have a body.
If we go to trial without the body,
they would be found not guilty.
We couldn't try them again if we had a body.
It would be double jeopardy.
-Kirtanananda was just out of control.
I think that led to a sort of a perfect storm brewing
because you have a narcissistic leader,
and therefore, to him, the end justifies the means,
whatever it takes -- murder, whatever it takes.
**
[ Man chanting indistinctly ]
-New Vrindaban, I think, epitomized
that messianic superiority where Kirtanananda,
he wanted to build up New Vrindaban as almost,
I guess, like a -- like a Hindu Vatican or something.
-It was just -- it was beautiful.
And I think that's what the goal was,
for Kirtanananda to build this...
Heaven on Earth.
-Never expected to see anything like this
in the hills of West Virginia.
-Absolutely incredible. -Oh, it's fabulous.
-I just don't know how they did it.
-We began with four block walls,
and then we added the terraces and fountains
and so many things.
The additions are still going on,
and hopefully they'll go on eternally.
-Kirtanananda had a lot of plans.
He had many more plans to expand the palace area,
you know, make a spiritual Disneyland.
**
How to make gold leaf, how to, you know, build pillars,
how to do all the things for construction to build it.
-Srila Kirtanananda Swami says
it's impossible to put a value on the building.
-Insurance men -- they just back off.
No one will actually say because it's impossible to build.
-It was a wonder of the world
in terms of the artwork and the craftsmanship.
At one point, it became so prominent that
they had tens of thousands of people
coming on tourist buses to see it.
But then, to build a city on the hill,
he used sort of ruthless means.
-Hare Krishnas have been asking for money
at airports for years now.
Krishnas have a big operation going,
all the money tax-free because they are a religious group.
-The Hare Krishna philosophy of raising funds
for the church was the term sankirtan.
Sankirtan was essentially devotional fundraising.
-Every time you went to an airport,
Hare Krishna devotees would approach you
and ask you if you'd like to have a copy of their book,
and then they would ask for donations.
-We were distributing millions of books,
but we didn't own anything as individuals.
It was foot soldiers out there selling books
and collecting money in large quantities.
-But Kirtanananda led for New Vrindaban
all kinds of activities
which are very much outside our principles.
-Transcendental trickery. What does that mean?
-Deceiving someone
in any way to get a donation.
[ Man chanting indistinctly ]
-At New Vrindaban, they found a way to go out,
collect money, and lie to people.
These young devotees who did not look like Hare Krishna devotees
would approach people and ask them for money
for well-known charities like Meals on Wheels,
Vietnam vets, schools, churches.
They called it The Pick.
-At New Vrindaban, sankirtan became The Pick,
or whatever you might call it.
Do you know why it's called The Pick?
Because that's something that carnies do.
It came from a word that carnies use
when they are taking advantage of people
or pickpocketing.
They needed money for New Vrindaban.
They needed money for the Palace of Gold.
They needed money to keep Kirtanananda's lifestyle up.
-At New Vrindaban, well, [chuckles]
you know, the issue is they used women,
and he worked them hard.
-There was a group of women
who went across the United States in vans
selling books and collecting money.
-Many of them would say, "I was stuck in this situation.
It's like schizophrenia.
I came here because I wanted a non-material lifestyle,
and yet my duty to Krishna was to get in the back of a van
with 15 other people and drive from place to place
and lie to people to collect money."
-I never determined how they figured this out,
but the Hare Krishnas in New Vrindaban
would make baseball caps and bumper stickers,
major college memorabilia --
Ohio State, Michigan, Notre Dame.
And they would send the teams out
on a college football game weekend,
and the women would walk through the parking lots,
and they would assert that this is for
Save the Children,
this is for lonely children in America,
whatever they could make up, and sell this material
which they were paying cents on the dollars for.
They would bring in close to $1 million a weekend.
[ Indistinct talking ]
-We sold the heck out of those stickers.
We had them loaded by the boxfuls in our vans,
just every team you could think of.
We also had generic stickers like Snoopy
that would work for generic kind of events,
and we'd have, like, an itinerary
to make our way to this big event
and work smaller things along the way.
We went to a lot of really cool stuff,
like Indy 500.
The concerts were awesome.
We had people who were drinking and doing drugs,
so they weren't as uptight with their money.
-Anything where there were a lot of people,
but I was like kind of, like, not outgoing.
So for me to be in a big crowd, I was, like, terrified.
[ Bell rings ]
First thing they sent me to was a Kentucky Derby.
They said, "Oh, let's see how she does."
Kirtanananda said that.
And I-I really actually spent
90% of my time in the bathroom
crying and freaking out 'cause I was so scared.
But against my desire, I became one of the biggest collectors.
You know, people thought I was attractive back then,
so I was, like, stuck,
because even with me not wanting to do it,
I could collect more money than the rest of them.
But then it became to where it was, like, too much
about making money, and, you know, we have, like,
things that we're supposed to follow,
our spiritual thing every day, which we used to do.
But then it was like, well, you know,
you're going out and collecting money,
so you don't have to do any of that.
And that's when a lot of us went off the deep end
and, you know, strayed and had all kinds of problems.
**
And because of being on the road,
I developed, you know, drinking problems.
I mean, I just couldn't take it.
I was actually an alcoholic before I joined the Krishnas.
That's why my mom was so happy that I joined the Krishnas,
because I never drank anything once I joined the temple,
until one day when I was on sankirtan years later.
But I was kind of, like, stuck doing it
because the more money you made, the more you had to go out.
But...
Kirtanananda would have a target of how much
he'd want to collect for a certain period of time.
I made like a quarter of a million dollars in that year.
[ Laughs ] Yes.
-A good day might be around $1,000 or more per person.
We'd have a room full of just money everywhere.
The deposits could never be more than $10,000
so that it wouldn't trigger the feds.
I guess the bank just got used to us coming in
with these $9,000 deposits every single day.
-That was their principal fundraising organization.
But if you weren't super successful,
Keith Ham was quoted as saying,
"There are three things that are better when you beat them --
your drum, your dog, and your wife."
-Kirtanananda felt like the Palace of Gold
would make him a prominent person
because he'd be making the biggest temple in America.
New Vrindaban became the de facto biggest community
in ISKCON.
-Kirtanananda exuded the feeling that,
"I'm the chosen one
and I hold the power."
We didn't really like that very much
[chuckles] as a group of leaders.
He always, right under the surface,
was pissing everybody off.
It was like, "Okay, uh, Kirtanananda,
you have your project and we have ours, you know.
So don't get too far ahead of yourself."
-Kirtanananda started saying things like,
"It's my temple, it's my men, it's my money.
I can do what I want."
He started getting very arrogant, let's say.
-Pretty soon, sankirtan became an incredible moneymaker.
And the man who ran that was Dennis Gorrick.
-In trying to figure out the hierarchy of New Vrindaban,
Dennis was almost like an independent contractor.
Dennis didn't have to really partake in anything
as long as he kept the money coming in.
-In the parlance of criminal organizations,
Dennis Gorrick was an earner.
He was in charge of the main money-making operation,
The Pick.
-Dharmatma's Western name was Dennis Gorrick.
Doing The Pick, this was somebody you did not cross.
He was definitely a bully, especially towards women.
He had this close relationship with Keith Ham,
which gave Dennis more authority.
-Kirtanananda -- he's your leader.
The best analogy is gonna be the don,
your Mafioso, right? He's the top.
And then underneath him, you've got guys
who are his made men, his captains.
Dennis -- his role is to control this section,
control the women's sankirtan, bring in the money.
It was organized crime
with Kirtanananda at the top.
-Dennis Gorrick was also ruthless
and treated the devotees horribly.
If they wanted off of The Pick, they would have to
ask Dennis Gorrick, and he might slap them.
He might shove them against the wall.
He might tell them, "Until I tell you,
you stay on The Pick."
-He could basically do whatever he wanted to do,
because money means power.
And so Dennis could do things that were outside of the rules,
like illicit sex with the women on his team.
And I became one of them.
And I -- And I did this
knowing that it was against the rules
and it was against our basic principles.
He was held, in general, in such esteem
that I thought that if he did it,
it was okay.
My first conversation with Dennis Gorrick,
he told me he knows how to please women.
Promise them everything and give them nothing.
-He had his own harem --
Multiple, I guess you would call them, wives.
But, you know, some of the New Vrindaban marriages
weren't based on any concept of love or companionship
or -- it's just, you were assigned.
And for women, your job was to serve.
-The culture around Dennis was that if it made him happy,
it should make me happy.
And if I wasn't happy for him,
there was something wrong with me.
Th-- I can't call it anything else
but being brainwashed.
And rumors abounded,
not just illicit relationships with the women on his team,
but other women in other temples.
Dennis was told by Keith Ham,
"You marry one of them or you marry all of them."
Dennis decided he would marry three of us.
-I never, ever liked the idea.
I didn't want to do it, but I --
it was either I go along with having two other co-wives
or I wasn't married to Dharmatma,
and I was too attached to him by that time.
Christina and I were both pregnant at the same time,
which was weird 'cause, yeah, we weren't --
didn't really get along, you know?
It was almost like, "Who's gonna have the baby first?"
kind of competition. [ Laughs ]
So I had Dhruva, and then three days later,
Christina had Prema.
**
-My mom didn't even get to name me.
Kirtanananda named me.
I mean, that's like...
who does that?
Being a girl in New Vrindaban,
you're not looked at on the same level as any boys.
You were told from a very young age
that you weren't gonna go to school,
you were going to be, um, married off,
most likely to somebody not of your choosing.
You're just less than. You're not valued.
-Um, it was a lot of fun times.
It was really just a beautiful playground.
The place was -- was heavenly.
And to me, he was just Uncle Kirtanananda, you know?
He was always very good to me, to my friends.
Like, he would -- you know, he'd play with us.
My father was quite a genius.
It was so awesome, what he started --
this new, like, tidal wave
of good energy, money coming in, wealth.
-As soon as Dhruva was born,
we were both very attached and happy to have him, you know.
But that's when Kirtanananda told my husband,
"Tell your wives they have to go out."
So when Dhruva was two months old,
I had to leave him behind and go out on the road
and wouldn't see him for weeks.
And that's when I kind of realized
that he wasn't all he's cracked up to be.
'Cause you wouldn't do that to a mother,
I don't think, personally.
-One of the strangest things that happened --
the women who were ordered to go out on sankirtan,
their children would be watched in -- in a nursery situation.
-In Krishna consciousness, you would want to make sure
that you were not attached to anything in this material world,
including people, which would include your children.
So your children were removed from you,
and then they would go off to a boarding school.
-In the gurukula system in New Vrindaban,
we would have one teacher who would be the teacher,
in whose ashram room you lived, where you slept,
and he was in charge of you.
-If you could talk, if you knew how to [chuckles]
make change for a dollar, you were out on The Pick.
If you weren't, you were in the gurukula.
People who were mentally unstable and obviously had,
you know, what we call now anger issues
were in charge of watching these children.
-I suffered physical abuses that were
so normal and so frequent
and so intensive.
Kids got their arms broken from being yanked
and roughly handled around,
constantly being beaten in many different ways --
switched with switches, paddled with paddles,
punched, [chuckles] whatever.
And it was a lifestyle, you know, that we lived,
that we grew up with.
Like, that's what our whole childhoods were made of.
I was alone. I didn't have protection.
My mother at that time was collecting.
She was gone for long periods of time.
I didn't see her much.
Keith Ham's example and character
certainly flowed down everything that I experienced.
He basically would preach that you have to control your wife,
you know, keep her in line, and beat her if necessary.
Everything flows down from the top in that sense.
-In New Vrindaban,
women were definitely seen as, um,
lesser human beings.
Dennis was so controlling
to, uh, the point where we had to ask,
"When can I eat? What can I have?"
I was at risk at all times
of anywhere from a slap
to a very severe beating.
He was and is an evil man.
I absolutely think that Dennis would refuse
to do an interview with you.
**
-Dennis Gorrick interview. Mark.
[ Woman chanting indistinctly ]
-I'm not gonna say that I was such a pure guy.
I had my problems, too.
Our philosophy is based on separation of the sexes.
Just for that reason, the butter and fire principle --
men are like butter and women are like fire,
and when the two come together [chuckles]
generally, you know, the butter starts melting.
So on some occasions, I had relations
with, uh, some of the ladies.
On a couple of occasions women told me that,
"I'm gonna leave if, you know, you don't do something with me."
I was perplexed because, you know, I felt guilty.
So I went to Kirtanananda and he said,
"Well, whatever it takes,
whatever it takes to keep them out there on The Pick,
getting -- making money."
But there could be up to 100 devotees going out.
It became more stress for me.
Sometimes I was a little firm
and maybe a little... heavy-handed.
-Kirtanananda told him --
he said, "What if I'm having trouble,
like, the girls don't want to go out?
What should I do?" And he said,
"Oh, just smack them. That always works."
-When he gave me that instruction that I smack them,
you know, I-I did it on occasion.
You know, they would argue, they would, uh --
they'd challenge you or cuss or something.
And I-I would smack them,
I mean, after getting the, uh, go-ahead from Kirtanananda.
But our philosophy is such that if the spiritual master
asks you to do something,
you take it as, uh, something good.
I thought it was something that had to be done.
As Kirtanananda explained,
whatever keeps them doing their service.
Prior to getting the go-ahead from Kirtanananda,
I'd never hit a woman in my life and, you know,
I-I feel terrible about it, that it happened, uh...
You know, uh...
You know what I mean? Sometimes you just lash out
when you get very disturbed and angry.
-Dennis beat me with, um, a wooden coat hanger.
He beat me with a metal nail file.
His favorite tool was, um, a rubber hose.
One of the worst times was when I was pregnant.
He made me strip off all my clothes,
lay on the floor,
and he just beat me with that rubber hose
up and down my back, up and down my legs.
-The rubber hose. Mm.
Well, t-truth being, uh,
she was one of the biggest problems.
There was a few times that I just lost it with her.
And I might have picked up something that was handy --
a stick or, you know, they say rubber hose.
There might have been a piece of something to that effect.
The problem is, nowadays with the #MeToo movement,
women can say anything.
And, you know, i-it's for me to prove.
-Oh. Man, I don't even know.
It hurts through every layer of skin that you have.
I remember that I had to stand up all night
because the only place that didn't hurt
was the bottom of my feet.
I did not dare press charges
because he would kill me.
Without a doubt.
And I finally just decided, you know what?
My kids are gonna 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.
And that was when I decided that I had to leave.
**
Okay.
Can we -- Can we move on?
**
-I have this memory from when I was four of my mother,
Christina, escaping New Vrindaban.
I remember being told for a couple of weeks
that she was coming back.
Well, she never came back.
And then the story changed.
My father -- he told me, "She doesn't love you.
She's not coming back. She never cared about you.
Just forget about her."
I was four.
**
[ Voice breaking ] I hated her for so long.
[ Sniffles ]
So long.
And wanted absolutely nothing to do with her
because of what my father did
and how he poisoned all of us against her.
That was the way things were done in New Vrindaban
to exert control.
It was more of that mental and emotional abuse.
**
-When Kirtanananda got too much involved in people's lives,
it caused him to almost lose his life
because people fought back at that.
-In October of 1985, a call came in that said
somebody had attacked Swami Kirtanananda.
-I was sitting on his lap when he got hit on the head
by a metal pole of sort,
and my father was there holding Kirtanananda's head together.
When he got out of the hospital, he was different.
-The doctor said it was enough to kill 100 men.
-That was the spiritual pushback to the extreme.
And once he survived that, he became more extreme.
[ Man chanting indistinctly ]
**
-When Kirtanananda survived the attack,
he was never the same.
Whatever he was before exponentially expanded
into a kind of...
mish-mash spiritual madness.
And his followers just followed him
because they're basically minions
instead of self-thinking individuals.
-The Swami bought an attack dog, a very expensive attack dog.
He had personal security people around him.
Once he had the dog growl and snarl at me and he asked me,
"Well, Sergeant Westfall, are you afraid of my dog?"
I said, "Well, unless they have bulletproof dogs, Swami,
I'm not afraid of your dog."
[ Indistinct singing ]
-Kirtanananda was kind of losing it.
He became, like, less and less, uh, himself.
We -- that's what I felt.
And more and more, like, off the deep end.
So, and, you know, people were following him.
Many devotees that lived there didn't want to believe
that he had lost it and that he had done anything wrong.
So they stayed with him no matter what.
-I think a lot of people there either didn't know
what he was doing or just kind of thought
they weren't supposed to be thinking about that
because he's a superior.
It's interesting how, in the name of morality
and the name of decency, people can become monsters.
**
-My dad -- I didn't know whether he was dead or alive
or really what that meant any more than he was gone.
Was he alive? Was he dead?
How does this resolve?
-I had a murder that I'd been investigating for several years,
the Charles St. Denis murder.
My prosecutor would not go forward
because there was no body.
We didn't have the corpus delicti
is what the attorneys always called it.
[ Man chanting indistinctly ]
-Eventually, the West Virginia State Police had been approached
by a man named Steven Bryant,
who claimed that, um, there were all sorts of crimes
going on out in New Vrindaban,
including murder and child abuse,
and, you know, Keith Ham was running the operation.
-Since 1977, these new self-appointed gurus
have made 300, 400, 500 disciples each.
So right now they hold the power of the movement
in their hands, but they don't hold the morality.
-Steve Bryant was a personal friend of mine
and he told me, "I'm gonna go to New Vrindaban."
And I says, "Oh, you can't go there."
I was trying to warn him.
He says, "Oh, yeah, uh, my wife wants to be with devotees
on a -- on a rural community, so we're gonna go there."
I says, "No, no, no, no, no, big mistake."
-Steve was a -- a zealot.
He was a person who interpreted scripture all of the time
and always called people out for they were violating this
or they were violating that.
-The word that comes to mind is he was manic.
He had a jewelry business that required him to travel.
-And he had absented himself from New Vrindaban,
and when he returned, he realized that Keith Ham
had initiated his wife.
-So Kirtanananda became her authority.
And that's one of the things
Steve Bryant was complaining about.
-He doesn't seem to be under the spell of Keith Ham
because he can resist.
Well, Keith Ham can't tolerate resistance.
-The walls started tumbling down
when they had another Hare Krishna devotee
who was about to come into an inheritance,
so they married Steve Bryant's wife to this new member
to keep him on the community long enough for them
to get the inheritance, which the Swami
would be able to get his hands on.
That's what had him riled up.
-And he knew that Keith Ham had taken over control
of his wife, and by virtue of that,
had gained control over his children.
And he's trying to get his children out of the community.
-One day he grabbed his kids
and left New Vrindaban property in his van.
And he was chased down by New Vrindaban people.
They forced him to stop,
and then they took his kids back to New Vrindaban.
[ Indistinct chanting ]
So after that, he called me up and he says,
"I'm gonna come to Berkeley.
We're going to do some writing together.
We're gonna defeat these guys. We're gonna take them down."
So he was in Berkeley
writing his book called "The Guru Business."
[ Typewriter keys clacking ]
**
-He wanted to expose what was happening to the Krishnas,
and he wanted to set the record straight.
Steven Bryant was going around and talking to people and --
and what you saw happening at the gurukula,
at the -- what they call with the school --
there was child abuse.
What was happening out on The Pick,
and this story about this man,
St. Denis, who had been murdered.
It was kind of a whispering out there
and not knowing what had happened.
Steven Bryant -- he was just so damn thorough.
And, you know, he was picking up momentum
and get-- and getting more and more information
and more and more first-hand accounts.
And he was also a catalyst.
And I feel that he was emboldening people to talk.
-Then he started traveling to other temples
and would make his allegations about New Vrindaban.
And that word was getting back to Keith Ham.
-He's threatening Keith Ham by telling him,
"Listen, I'm going to reveal. I'm pulling the curtain back."
-He talked to devotees.
He said, "The sinister movement is within our movement,"
and they couldn't have some whistleblower going around
saying there's criminal activity going on.
Just like the mob, you can't have a snitch.
Can't allow that.
**
-Steve was coming back for the 1985 World Conference
where all of the officials of the Hare Krishna movement
were going to be in, uh, West Virginia.
Steven Bryant felt that he was gonna burst into this meeting
and he was gonna make his accusations against Kirtanananda
and the gurus were all gonna turn around and say,
"Well, we're gonna remove him."
And then Steven Bryant was going to be the victor.
-He had written statements.
He had cassette tapes that he brought from people.
And I was surprised at how many people
were willing to talk to Steven Bryant
and perhaps bring about a change
where their love for the religion
could be totally aligned with the love of the hierarchy
that was actually administering that religion.
Steven was brave, but Steve was also foolhardy.
-At one point before the 1985 World Conference,
he called my sheriff at the time,
Sheriff Donald Bordenkircher,
and said, "I want to appear at the World Conference,
but I need personal protection."
But in West Virginia, sheriffs are elected officials.
And Sheriff Bordenkircher knew that when he ran for reelection,
if he could pick up 500 votes from the community out there
just by doing some favors for them,
that was a pretty good trade.
So what the sheriff did was called the Hare Krishnas
about the conversation with Steven Bryant
and that he was coming back,
and that put the Krishna community on alert.
-Steven was so happy because,
"Oh, I'm working with the sheriff,
and I'm doing God's work."
And at some point, the sheriff had said he should get a gun
or make sure you protect yourself.
So he's staying at a local motel.
And the sheriff came by, and when he sees the sheriff,
he said, "Hey, I got the piece."
He shows him the gun. He's really proud of himself.
And like -- and the sheriff says, "Good, good.
That's good," you know.
-So then the sheriff called two road deputies in
and told them to locate Steven Bryant and arrest him.
His pistol was in his -- in his belt.
Well, the two deputies put him down on the floor,
put the handcuffs on, seized his .45 pistol,
and took him up to the office,
and they charged him with a weapons charge.
-So it was the sheriff's idea that he gets a gun.
He gets a gun.
Sheriff comes and arrests him for having a gun.
So he wondered just how deeply this connection went
between the sheriff and the Hare Krishnas.
It came out while Steve was in jail on the gun charge
that the sheriff had actually invited members
of the Hare Krishna community in to view all these documents
that Steve Bryant had collected
that were incriminating the Hare Krishnas.
The sheriff was encouraging Steve Bryant to collect
in order to incriminate the Hare Krishnas, and, in fact,
the sheriff had invited the Krishna community in,
members of the community in, to say,
"Here's what Steve Bryant has on you."
-Steven Bryant was held in the jail
until the 1985 World Conference was over.
When Steven Bryant got out of jail,
That's when they started to surveil him.
Thomas Drescher took a Snoopy sticker
that they used in their sankirtan collections
and put it on the back bumper of his van,
so that made tailing him that much easier.
**
-At that point, Steve told me,
"I'm gonna quit doing all this."
He told me, "I'm gonna give up on this battle.
I'm not gonna do this anymore. It's too dangerous."
-He really felt betrayed by the authorities.
-When he came back, he was gonna just
start his life over again.
But it was too late.
-I remember two guys coming to the door,
and Dennis told me to get $5,000 out of the money room.
And then, um, I saw him handing this money
to Thomas Drescher.
-Tirtha had come to my house,
and he showed me some pages from a book
where Kirtanananda was being criticized by Steven Bryant.
And then I was authorized to give him some money
to do surveillance.
That's all it was supposed to be for --
surveillance of Steven Bryant.
-That's when Thomas Drescher --
he was given money for it,
and he was on his way with some false identification.
He went to Los Angeles.
-And I said, "Steve, don't go to L.A.
Don't go to L.A. because the police here
in Berkeley like us. This is our refuge."
But Steve was very worried that if we were together,
we would both be taken out together,
and then there would be no one left to tell the story.
He wanted to go to Los Angeles for that reason.
He said, "This is probably the last time I'll ever see you."
He knew.
-I got a call from the detective from Los Angeles,
and he asked me if I knew Steven Bryant.
And I'm thinking about the file cabinets and the boxes
and all of the materials that I had.
-Everything went on with Kirtanananda knowing about it
in the community.
-The attorney said, "We need to talk,
because I can help you find the body.
We need to make a deal."
-The first image that I can remember seeing
was them pulling my father's skull
out of the earth.
-They were also concerned about assaults and sexual crimes
against the children in the schools.
-Kirtanananda had this philosophy that sex is sex,
and you're having your sex
within the bounds of your marriage.
And you're criticizing these guys for having,
as he called it, "hankie panky" in the gurukula with the boys.
-You're taking down an organization
or taking down someone, suddenly there's a -- the flip.
And now 51% is turning against them.
[ Gunshots ]
**