-Banwell interview. Take one. Mark.
-How should I say this? Okay.
My name is Jeffrey M. Banwell.
I'm a former special agent
of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
**
My initial assignment -- I was the junior agent --
the counties I was given were the least populated
and hardest to navigate.
**
I had to familiarize myself with the principal location
of the Hare Krishna community.
I think it was a 2,000-acre settlement
in the hills of West Virginia.
That was when my education about the Hare Krishnas started.
**
-This world is a sick place.
This is the place of the fallen or the conditioned souls,
and it is a place for reformation.
-Keith Ham was the spiritual leader
that talked a...high element of social consciousness.
[ Thunder rumbles ]
But in the end, it was all about power
and it was all about money.
And as Winston Churchill alliterated,
power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The Palace of Gold was,
I guess you'd call it a rammed earth structure.
It was basically mud.
The Palace of Gold is basically mud
and it's been gilded with gold leaf
to appear to be something that it is not.
That's my opinion of New Vrindaban.
At that time,
everything underneath it was rotten.
The West Virginia State Police had been approached
by a man named Steven Bryant.
-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.
-Steven Bryant claimed that there were
all sorts of crimes going on out in New Vrindaban,
including murder,
and that Keith Ham was running the operation.
Steve Bryant was alleging that he was being surveilled.
He was being followed.
It was a week later
he was found murdered.
**
-I asked to be filmed in silhouette for this
because I was advised by the police to do that.
Steve Bryant was a personal friend of mine,
and I do get threats
and threatening-type messages even now.
I'm just, you know, erring on the side of caution.
**
Kirtanananda was one of the early disciples of Prabhupada.
He felt like the Palace of Gold
would make him a prominent person.
He would have the biggest community, the biggest temple,
the biggest everything.
**
People knew you could get into trouble if you spoke out.
Steve Bryant found that out himself as soon as he protested,
as soon as he caused trouble.
He's a marked man.
Steve told me, "They're gonna get us.
If we're together, they're gonna take us together.
We'll both go.
One of us has to survive
so that there'll be somebody to tell the story."
The last day I saw Steve Bryant
was around May 19, 1986.
He went to Los Angeles.
He died May 22, 1986.
[ Siren wailing ]
-Leroy and I worked the division
called Robbery-Homicide Division,
Special Homicide Investigations.
Basically high-publicity cases.
-But the thing was surprising that the Hare Krishnas --
I mean, you're not talking local gangs.
You're not talking Mafia case.
But this is just so strange.
**
-On May 22, 1986,
Bryant decided to park his van
directly under a streetlight and then sleep for the night.
He was seated in the driver's seat, smoking a joint
anywhere between midnight to 1:00 in the morning.
Someone walked up to the side of the van
and took his .45 semi-automatic
and put it up next to the window...
...and shot him in the head.
**
And then he shot him a second time in the head.
**
The gun was torn apart and thrown in the trash.
And why did this guy get shot on a side street in West LA
and he's connected to the Krishnas in West Virginia?
**
-I was in the temple there at 3:00,
3:15 in the morning.
The whole place was buzzing.
Steven Bryant has been killed.
Kirtanananda gave a class that morning
and someone right out asked him,
"What should we think when a demon is killed?"
And Kirtanananda just says, "Well, like a poisonous snake,
you're not disturbed when it's killed."
**
It troubled me to think that Kirtanananda could be involved
after having so much faith and trust in him over the years.
But nothing went on in the community without his say.
**
Later on, when I went back to the sankirtan house,
I got a phone call from Thomas Drescher.
He said, "Did Kirtanananda tell you to give me money?"
And I said, "I don't know anything about it."
And I honestly didn't.
And then he got very, very abusive
and he just said, "Well, he better not screw me around.
I need money to get out of the country."
**
-I got a call from LAPD.
Paul Tippin said, "Do you know a guy named Steven Bryant?"
And I said, "Yeah. What's he up to?"
He said, "Well, he's dead."
And he said, "Well, how much do you know about these people?"
I'm thinking about the file cabinets and the boxes
and all of the materials that I had.
And I said, "Well, I know kind of a lot."
**
-LAPD, we start learning more and more about New Vrindaban.
We were shocked to find out that they were involved
in so many different criminal acts.
I mean, it's so many that we heard about.
After a while, we're just in awe of what was happening.
-Luckily, we found out West Virginia State Troopers
had an informant that was talking to them.
-Randall Gorby, he was an aging revolutionary.
Early on, he came to like the Hare Krishnas,
and he put himself at their disposal.
At that time, the ruling group in New Vrindaban
were trying to acquire more property,
and they did not have a very good relationship
with the farmers who were their neighbors.
But they knew that some of the farmers
wanted to sell their property.
-And so Randall acted as a straw man for them
to purchase acreage because the local West Virginia natives
weren't gonna sell property to the Hare Krishnas.
-Gorby knew Keith Ham
and was a friend of Tom Drescher,
and Tom Drescher reached out to Randall
and told Randall, "They promised to pay me to do this..."
[ Metal taps ]
"...to Bryant."
He never said kill. He said, "To do this to Bryant."
And Randall got cold feet to say the least.
And he told the state police, and so they gave him a recorder
and told him to have a conversation and get it on tape.
And so Randall did.
**
-If we just had a dead body in a van, that's a whodunit
and you have no clues.
We got a clue right out of the get-go.
[ Telephone rings ]
**
Once we got the phone call and you had Gorby
talking about what was going on,
it started the nucleus of the case.
We knew we needed to talk to Randall Gorby.
-We had to go to West Virginia.
**
We get there, Banwell comes out of an office.
Comes up, they say, "You're not gonna believe this.
Someone blew up Gorby's house."
**
-At that point, Leroy Orozco and Paul Tippin arrive
and it's like, "Well, Randall's in the hospital
'cause his house blew up."
The entire house was completely full of natural gas.
-We suspect someone disconnected it
with the knowledge that every morning he'd wake up,
the first thing he would do is light a cigarette.
[ Explosion ]
-He went through the roof like a rocket.
But we were notified that Randall Gorby was not dead,
that he was in the hospital and in intensive care,
second- and third-degree burns on three quarters of his body.
-But we're going to the hospital
and we're gonna do a dying declaration,
which is a specific type of interrogation
that can be used later in a court proceeding.
-Gorby, he came up with what we needed.
-That Drescher called him and told him he had killed Bryant.
-Randall Gorby also told police
that Thomas Drescher was up in Kent, Ohio.
**
-I received a call and they were looking for a murder suspect
that they felt was in Kent.
They gave me a description of the vehicle,
which was a white Isuzu.
It had Oregon plates on it.
So I grabbed another detective and we got in my unmarked car
and went looking for him.
We were driving around and my partner is like,
"You know, it's getting towards lunchtime.
How long are we gonna do this?"
I said, "You know, if we're hungry, maybe he's hungry."
And I had knowledge of the Krishnas,
and I remembered that they're vegetarians.
And I told my partner, I said,
"Let's just check a couple of the restaurants
that serve vegetarian food."
So we started towards one, and as we got there,
we see the white Isuzu.
**
So I decided we're gonna do
the stop right there in the parking lot.
**
When we ordered Thomas Drescher out of the car,
he was stone-faced.
The vehicle was full of suitcases and bags.
There was a stun gun.
There were several knives,
a blackjack.
Then we found a lot of handwritten notes.
First ones were about getting out of the country,
and it talked about going to New York City
to the Indian Embassy and getting visas.
We also found Thomas Drescher had over $4,000 in large bills.
He had plans that he was going to disappear.
-Authorities say Thomas Drescher,
a member of the West Virginia Krishna compound,
was hired to kill Steven Bryant.
-The allegation is that, despite the docile appearance
of the Krishnas, that there's a violence underneath,
that Steve Bryant was a dissenter
and that's why he was killed.
-I think it's a concoction by people
that have organized themselves to discredit, defame,
and destroy New Vrindaban.
-Tirtha got arrested and the reaction
of the entire community in New Vrindaban,
myself and everybody included,
was, like, completely shocked and disbelief
that Kirtanananda would have anything to do
with hiring someone to commit a murder.
-The fact is they have not shown any connection
between the murder of Mr. Bryant and our community.
-Is there any connection?
-Not that I know of.
**
-In developing the information necessary
to continue the investigation,
the issue was if Drescher was hired to kill somebody...
...how were they funding that?
So we had to learn what their funding mechanism was.
-So I'm sitting in the United States Attorneys office
and Jeff Banwell said, "Do devotees
ever go across state lines other than this murder?"
And then I told him about the financial crimes and The Pick.
And that's when Jeff Banwell said, "Eureka.
Another federal crime."
-There is a statute for going after organizations,
and the acronym is RICO.
R-I-C-O --
Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations.
Now, individuals within the organization
will be charged with crimes that fall under the federal statutes.
And we had two of the principal elements
with a contract murder...
[ Gunshot ]
...and copyright violations.
-And that's why we were interested
in the copyright violations and the money and the scams
that were being done all over the United States,
ordered by Kirtanananda Swami.
So we decided that we were gonna get search warrants
and get a team together,
and we were gonna raid Dennis Gorrick's house
because he ran the sankirtan operation.
-I was in New York City, and I get a phone call
saying that the FBI had been there with helicopters,
with tractor trailers, and they were emptying out my warehouse,
and that really freaked me out.
-But when you open the garage door,
it's floor to ceiling of boxes
with the counterfeit hats and bumper stickers.
-By the end of the day,
they had taken almost two semi loads of contraband,
copyright infringement material, and computers.
-I wasn't there, so I came back to the house.
All the shelves were emptied out.
They had taken everything they could from the house.
It was pretty heavy.
-Now we had all their financial records.
-And so then the Swami decides
he's gonna go out on a publicity tour
and he's gonna set the record straight.
-60 agents.
Now, do you want to tell me
that that would have happened to the Catholic Church?
-Did you give the order to murder Steve Bryant?
-[ Chuckles ]
I'm surprised at you.
Of course not.
-I don't know if he'd ever really been in a situation
where people were gonna ask him tough questions.
-And you're not concerned
about all of these legal inquiries?
-No, not at all.
Actually, they're doing us a great favor,
because there's been some publicity about us.
-So you're enjoying this? -Of course.
-Kirtanananda was talking about the sankirtan
and saying that he had nothing to do with it,
that it was all me, which wasn't true
because everything went on with Kirtanananda
knowing about it in the community.
I lost respect for him.
-Banwell and I had to deal with both the murders
and the financial stuff.
But what makes it federal is they used the mail
and that makes it mail fraud.
So that helped us leverage some of the other people.
**
-I became formally charged with three counts of mail fraud.
They could have charged me with 1,000 counts.
After some time, Jeff Banwell and Sergeant Westfall
showed up one morning and said,
"The train's gonna be leaving soon
and we really suggest you get on it."
-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 needed to get a charge immediately on Drescher
to hold him and maybe even bring him to West Virginia.
So I offered,
"I'll sign a first-degree murder warrant on Thomas Drescher."
**
-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?
**
-Because of the one question about not having the body
in the St. Denis case, we were all concerned
that a jury might not find our case to be viable.
So we started working on Dan Reid to cooperate.
Dan Reid worked as a bookkeeper on the farm.
He came to believe that Charles St. Denis
was having an affair with his wife,
and that was hard for him to process.
After St. Denis went missing, Dan Reid had fled.
The two detectives, Tippin and Orozco,
located Dan Reid in California.
-At the time, he had a job in Beverly Hills
in a very exclusive law firm.
-I remember the day that we walked in there --
slick, nice leather jacket, Gucci'd out.
You know, the beard.
I mean, he looked like a nice kid.
And then the panic -- "What are you doing?"
"You're under arrest for murder."
**
-And Thomas Drescher went to trial.
**
And we had all of our witnesses come in. Deborah Gere came in.
There were some other people who came in that would testify
that all of them believed that Thomas Drescher
had killed Charles St. Denis and had buried the body.
Tom White, the prosecutor, told me every day of the trial,
he said, "I'm gonna be in there doing this
and questioning somebody
and the door in the back of the courtroom is gonna open
and Charles St. Denis is gonna walk through it."
And I said, "Trust me, Mr. White.
Charles St. Denis is not gonna walk through that door."
There's only been one other conviction
in the state of West Virginia where there was no body,
but they found Drescher guilty.
Thomas Drescher is sentenced to life with no chance of parole.
The attorney who had been appointed for Dan Reid said,
"We need to talk
because Dan Reid can help you find the body.
We need to make a deal."
-Daniel Reid was allowed to plead
to a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter
after he agreed to show police where the body had been buried.
-What Dan Reid testified to numerous times...
...he said that he called Charles St. Denis and said,
"Let's bury the hatchet."
And when he got out of his Blazer
and started toward the cabin,
Thomas Drescher was waiting for him.
[ Gunshots ]
Drescher looked at him and he wasn't dead.
-Our dad was a big guy, and he started coming at him.
-Drescher, he yelled to Dan Reid, "Give me a knife."
Dan Reid handed the knife to Thomas Drescher
and he plunged it into his chest.
**
So they both rolled Charles St. Denis' body
up into the plastic.
But then St. Denis' eyes opened and he says,
"Don't do that. You'll smother me."
-So Tirtha smashes him in the side of the skull
with the hammer... and he went limp.
-They put the body in the back of Charles St. Denis' Blazer.
They drove down over the hill where there was a reservoir.
-And they dragged him over to the river
where they dammed up the creek.
-He took rocks and blocked the water
so he could redirect it to one side of the stream.
-Tirtha knew that if he dug the grave underneath that stream
that a dog would never be able to smell it.
-It's something that Thomas Drescher learned
when he was in the Army.
-But my dad was still breathing.
-He started yelling out, "Don't do this.
Don't do this," you know, again and again.
-At that point, Thomas Drescher told Chakra,
"Start saying your prayers. Start chanting Krishna."
And he folded St. Denis' body up and stuffed it down in the hole
and then covered it up with gravel and rocks
and then took the other rocks away
so the stream would cover the body.
**
-While he was under there, there was some evidence
that he was still alive there, trying to get out.
**
-I was down around that stream 20 times.
Never thought to look under the water.
-The first image that I can remember seeing
was them pulling my father's skull out of the earth.
It was gruesome.
**
-One of the things that I had to investigate
at the state level was the complaints about
sexual crimes against the children in the schools.
**
-How widespread was the child abuse
and why I think it was so widespread?
It's a question I've thought about.
**
-In Krishna consciousness, you would want to make sure
that you were not attached to anything in this material world
which would include your children.
So your children were removed from you at 5 years old
and then they would go off to a gurukula.
**
-The issue of molestation and sexual assaults on children
in the community was a -- was a real problem.
The devotees would say some of the teachers
are not mentally capable.
-My father was no longer there to protect me.
And they knew that probably better, a lot better than I did.
During my time in the gurukula,
there was rampant abuse, physical abuses,
sexual abuses that were so normal
and so frequent and so intensive.
I remember it was, like, dark and everyone else was sleeping,
and I just remember being woken up
with something on my shoulder.
And I asked him, you know --
you know, like innocent kids do, is ask straightforward,
"What are you doing?" you know?
**
And he said, "It's good for you.
It's helping you relax."
And he started massaging -- massaging me there.
My body was frozen.
And I don't remember much after that,
but this happened frequently.
Like, it became a thing.
I've been in trauma therapy
and really spent a lot of time with these memories.
It was just so disgusting.
It's hard to really convey
the intensity of what it is for a child
and the impact that it can echo throughout our lives, really.
**
-I got enough information to get a warrant
on one of the teachers.
And after I arrested him, I realized
that he was actually part of the victims' circle,
which is not unusual in sexual assaults of young people,
that he had been a student at the school
and he, too, had been molested by teachers
or people who were assigned to the school.
So I was trying to get a handle on
just how many people in the school
had been molested, and I had a picture.
It was a picture of -- of a group of kids
standing on the steps of the Palace of Gold.
And I said, "Could you point out how many of those kids
had been molested?"
And he stopped for a long time.
And he looked and then he looked up to me and he said,
"Well, it'd be hard to find one that wasn't."
-The mistreatment of children problem
was already existing to a -- to a small extent,
even when Prabhupada was here,
and Prabhupada made very dire statements.
He said we should hang them.
It was never his authorized idea
that the children would be mistreated.
But after he died,
the children were severely mistreated or abused.
-Sexuality had a very fearful element to it,
and celibacy was, you know, the answer.
And when you put someone who has
that type of unresolved sexual drive in charge of children,
it's gonna come out in a -- in a denied way.
-There seems to be a special relationship
with you and the young boys.
Can you explain that? -That is love.
Just as I love the boys, God loves --
God loves us and the boys love me.
**
-I went to New Vrindaban.
There's Kirtanananda driving around
with a little boy on his lap.
Kirtanananda had little boys in his cottage,
little boys on his lap.
Everybody could see he's sitting on a big seat,
he's covered with little boys.
What's going on here?
It was just pedophile heaven.
**
-I care deeply about justice, believe it or not.
And because of the immersion
that I had in the world that was going on out there,
I cared very, very deeply about these children.
And there was one incident in particular
where I connected the dots about Keith Ham.
At New Vrindaban, they had a dispute over fences.
West Virginia can make a living doing fence law, you know?
So I went to talk to Keith Ham about the fence.
And when I walked in to his room,
there was a young boy, I'd say 6, 7 years old,
sleeping in that bed, and then there was Keith Ham,
who was sitting or standing, is outside the bed.
There was a look like I'd caught somebody doing something.
And not just a look.
There was an energetic assurance that I had walked --
It was like...that.
At that moment, what I had seen would later be confirmed
that the Swami had a propensity for young boys.
**
-And he was grooming them.
He was grooming these little boys.
Maybe it was that you were the cutest one,
but maybe it was also the fact that you were more vulnerable.
-When there was some complaints that came to him,
he had this philosophy that sex is sex.
He would say, "So you're having your sex
within the bounds of your marriage
so that you can maintain your material attachments.
And you're criticizing these guys for having,"
as he called it, "hanky panky" in the gurukula with the boys.
It's like the pot calling the kettle black.
I mean, these things were openly used by the teachers
to rationalize some of their sexual abuse.
-It's been a persistent allegation here for years
that children are sexually used. -That is not true.
-Unequivocally? -It's never been true.
Unequivocally.
**
-As we were moving along in our federal prosecution,
we needed Thomas Drescher to testify against Kirtanananda.
-Thomas Drescher is serving a sentence of life without mercy
for the 1983 killing of Charles St. Denis.
Despite that, Bhaktipada recently elevated him
to the title of Swami.
-The significance of this picture
was the celebration of Thomas Drescher
being elevated to the rank of Swami.
The people who are walking along and celebrating
so that Thomas Drescher can see out of his cell window
and see that he is still loved.
I think it was insurance to keep Thomas Drescher quiet,
to not implicate Kirtanananda.
Here is somebody who is serving life without mercy
for murdering a devotee,
and yet he's being elevated to the rank of Swami.
So many people felt that it was an insult
to the entire religion.
**
In 1991, the RICO indictment was finally rendered
by the Justice Department.
**
-This summer, Bhaktipada was sentenced to 30 years
for mail fraud, racketeering, and conspiracy to commit murder.
He is now appealing his conviction
and is out of prison on a quarter-million dollars bond.
-He was convicted at that trial,
but got a stay of his sentencing and was released.
And he waited for his appeal,
and his appeal was handled by Alan Dershowitz,
the same attorney who had handled many high-profile cases.
Alan Dershowitz did not come cheap,
and some of the devotees at the farm
were concerned about the amount of money
that was being spent on Kirtanananda's criminal defense
that would keep him from going to prison.
Unfortunately, Alan Dershowitz's appeal was successful.
They set aside the conviction and ordered a new trial.
**
-So now Kirtanananda,
the court had ordered him to leave New Vrindaban
and never come back again,
like physically never step foot there again.
And he was being driven in a Winnebago motor home.
The curtain to the back section of the mobile home opened up
and the driver catches Kirtanananda,
you know, having sex with this kid.
-He sexually assaulted a young boy from India.
And that shocked everyone.
I mean, everyone was just aghast at that.
-And that seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back
when it came to the devotees.
They seemed to turn against him.
-Kirtanananda, he separated himself from the truth
of who Prabhupada was from the dignity
of what a spiritual leader is.
Part of what Prabhupada taught us,
you have to live by social norms.
-I would say my reaction when I heard about those things
was probably very similar to your reaction.
This is crazy. This is madness.
I mean, science shows
that the more someone has power and -- and status
or believes they do in an exact opposite scale,
their empathy diminishes.
-With pride comes the sense of invulnerability.
And sooner or later, something trips you up as an individual,
as a politician, as a priest, as a guru.
At a certain point, the society
separated itself from New Vrindaban.
New Vrindaban became its own world.
-The community had been expelled.
And, unfortunately, the devotees,
they were just swept up in this situation.
So it was a really difficult time.
-ISKCON, they had a big problem on their hands
because they had been,
up to that point, advertising New Vrindaban as the main show,
and now all of a sudden they had to do a backflip.
They said New Vrindaban is a rogue community.
You know, they tried to backtrack.
-I never thought I was on the same level as Prabhupada.
I never thought that for a second.
I was constantly teaching the opposite.
But a short time later, I became a villain
because I'd been one of the original gurus.
**
It got to the point of being a guru was almost like being
an ex-Nazi or something.
Like, where were you, you know, when Hitler was in power?
And I just thought, Jesus Christ.
You know, I just -- At that point, I just thought...
I'm out of here.
-In my mind, when Kirtanananda became a so-called guru,
the gates of Hell literally opened up.
The molesting really, really took off.
Really became widespread.
**
-Eventually it came to my attention,
actually, through my son.
**
We developed a school in France and my son was there.
He and his friend came to me and told me
that the teacher in that school was physically abusing them.
When I called the person into the room
who was the teacher at that time,
I picked him up by the neck and lifted him off the ground.
I was so...mad about this.
And then I ask him to leave.
When it comes to something like child abuse,
there is no maybe about it.
And so you have to decide how you're going to deal with it.
**
It's always shocking, and you have to make a decision
whether you're going to try to protect yourself
and the movement by denying it or hitting it head-on.
It became so much of an issue for me,
that ultimately led to my departure from the movement.
**
-We did have ISKCON sued.
I helped collate the names of many victims.
**
-One group of people raised in the schools
run by the Hare Krishnas is suing the group for rape,
torture, and brainwashing they allege
they endured at the hands of teachers.
-A large amount of money settled,
but I wanted our day in court to speak our truth.
I didn't care about money or this or that
or destroying ISKCON or any of that.
Philosophically speaking, culturally, morally speaking,
it was shameful and it still stands
as a huge blemish on the character of ISKCON.
-That was a major wake-up call.
And right on the spot, there was an organization
created called Children of Krishna.
We raised $100,000 in pledges,
which, for Krishna devotees, was a lot of money.
So in 1998, we formed this Global Child Protection Office
to investigate any allegations of abuse
that happened up in the past and address it.
You know, you can't fix something
if you don't talk about it.
**
-In Prabhupada's teachings,
the consequences for -- for posing as a guru
are the most severe because a false guru is misleading people
and destroying their lives.
**
-We went back to trial in 1996.
The difference would be that in this trial,
Kirtanananda's sexual behavior involving young children
had turned many of his long-time devotees against him.
And among those was Thomas Drescher.
He'd been inundated with mail in his prison cell
from people from the community who were talking about
all of the things that Kirtanananda had done.
Thomas Drescher is willing to testify to both of the murders
and who authorized them.
So we went to trial in 1996.
It was a much different situation.
**
-In 1996, Thomas Drescher sat on the witness stand coolly
and looked Kirtanananda right in the eye.
When asked who told him to kill Charles St. Denis,
Drescher said, "Kirtanananda Bhaktipada told me to do it."
[ Gunshots ]
And he was the one who had ordered him to kill
and had paid for the murder of Steven Bryant in Los Angeles.
[ Metal taps ]
And that pretty much sealed the case,
except that there was one more witness
that was to come after Thomas Drescher,
and that was me.
So I got on the witness stand.
The Dershowitz brothers stood up and said, "Your Honor,
may we approach the bench?"
The attorneys asked for a recess to discuss a plea agreement
with the United States attorney,
and Judge Merhige looked over at me and he said,
"You know what? Think you got him this time, son."
**
I don't think that Kirtanananda thought
that he was actually gonna serve a day in prison.
Judge Merhige sentenced him to 360 months.
And he said, "36 months?"
And their lawyer leaned over and said, "No, 360 months."
And as I looked across the room and looked at Swami's face,
he was no longer sarcastic-looking.
He understood now that he was going to prison,
probably for the rest of his life.
His rule was over.
As Kirtanananda was being sentenced,
I also realized that this long,
long journey was also over for me.
In many ways, his conduct changed my life, too,
because I couldn't walk away
while this man was doing what he was doing.
One of the things that I look back on this case
that impresses me and I'm kind of proud of
is the fact that New Vrindaban survived Kirtanananda Swami.
**
The palace is used for what it's supposed to be.
It's a palace of worship.
The intensity when Kirtanananda was there
is no longer there.
New Vrindaban no longer relies on sankirtan money,
but they do have funds that come in.
Ironically, underneath all of the acreage
that New Vrindaban owns is natural gas.
And it's a pretty lucrative deal
because of the amount of acreage that they have.
**
-Part of our history is our international society
taking action against New Vrindaban
and then over the years, our society
bringing New Vrindaban back into the fold.
Reparations being made,
a chance for New Vrindaban to take corrective action.
I'm very happy to be part of the history of reparation.
I'm very happy to be coming back from betrayal.
We're not going to deny what happened.
But we're gonna do our very, very best
to make sure it doesn't happen again.
**
-For all the pain and suffering
that he caused to other people.
After I regained custody of my children,
it was a very, very difficult time.
They had been told, if you behave really badly,
she'll get tired of it and send you back home.
Their loyalty was to their dad.
-I wanted absolutely nothing to do with her.
I fought her every day when she got custody because I --
of what my father did and how he poisoned all of us against her.
-But I want my babies back. That's what I want.
I want my babies back. I want to be their mommy.
I want to -- I want to love them and care for them
and let them know that they're the most important thing to me.
-What she did, even though it was...
I know the hardest thing she's ever had to do...
was to separate herself from her kids.
She had no other choice.
**
-You know, I-I came to realize something
that I had never realized before,
and that is that I was brave
to get out of there and to take the risk of being killed
in order to make a better life for my kids.
**
-We believe in karma.
You know, what goes around comes around.
And karma is a purif-- purifying agent, too.
**
I first went to the county jail in Gainesville.
It was worse than Hell.
And then the judge finally let me out.
**
-I think it's 45 years that we've been together and married.
We got legally married in --
when he was in prison. [ Laughs ]
We've gone through Hell and back.
And it's not as if it's all been rosy,
but somehow or other -- I mean, I always said,
I'm gonna be with him till we die.
And, like, I've always stuck to that no matter what.
-The reason why we moved away from New Vrindaban
was because I told my mother
that I was getting sexually interfered with.
**
We moved all the way across the country.
We didn't have things in the house
that really reminded me of it.
But when my father died,
it really was the beginning of a dark time for me.
And so it would make sense to return to the place
where that thing happened to more deeply understand it
and to maybe unravel the mystery that that place has.
**
When I returned to New Vrindaban,
I was talking to people around town.
Typical conversations would be, "Who are you?
What's your name? Where are you --" And, "I'm from here."
And, "Oh, really? Who are your parents?"
You know, "Oh, Chakradara. Oh, my gosh."
You know, "Well, that's the guy that...", you know.
And, "Oh, you went to gurukula here?"
And word got around
to the previous headmaster of our gurukula.
He gave, you know, an amazing retort,
which was that I don't know why you're blaming me
for any of these things because, as you know,
these things are all part of your karma.
**
Well, I could deliver you a lot of your karma, too, then.
How about I punch you in the face right now and --
and it's just all part of Krishna's divine plan?
I said to myself, I want to figure out
what is the baby from the bathwater here?
What is the actual tradition? What is the actual culture here?
What is Krishna consciousness?
**
And so I started all of Prabhupada books,
and I intensively read and contemplated, meditated,
and I came to the conclusion that this is my life.
I'm -- I'm basically a Krishna person.
So I decided that I wanted to regain
some of the belonging in our family
and these relationships,
certainly very much so with Chaitanya Lila.
-He shared with me the abuse that he went through as a child
and they're horrific, really.
Like, I've cried.
But he has done a lot of healing.
-With her, I've finally found a partner in life.
-We're at the airport.
-On our way to India
for putting my father to rest,
spirit to rest, and getting married --
two of the most major life events that we will see.
**
This is Krishna's place.
**
And so to me, this seemed a very natural
and befitting resolution.
-[ Speaking in native language ]
-To put my father's spirit to rest where it was wanting to go.
**
-Bhima said there's a lot more to it in the Vedic culture.
You know, there's, you know, duties as sons
that we need to do, and it sounded right to me.
Everything kind of fell into place.
Yeah, we both made it here at the same time.
It's a pretty great feeling.
**
-I'm glad we could do something for him, huh?
-[ Sniffles ] -Yeah.
**
-I've struggled a lot in life to come to this point.
This journey to Vrindaban marks the beginning
of a new life for me.
I've finally found a partner in life
that naturally resonates with the Krishna part of me
and at the same time
the traumatic and psychological aspects
that have come with my experience.
**
-I actually saw Prabhupada when he came to visit New Vrindaban,
and he was a person that did project authority
and piety, theology.
**
Sometimes people criticize the devotees.
Why would you put up with so much abuse?
People would say, "Well, they must be stupid."
And they were not stupid. They were hopeful.
**
We're all hopeful of something better.
-I'm really hoping that resolving, finally,
this whole long story of my father's murder
will assuage a lot of long-felt grief
and perhaps help a lot of us
to see that there's a larger picture.
**
[ Cheers and applause ]
Regaining some of the belonging and these relationships
has been tremendous for me.
Putting my father's story to rest here
is really a big part of our starting point.
[ Cheers and applause ]
It's time to build a more positive future.
[ Chanting in native language ]
**