Murder, Madness, and the Hare Krishnas

Not since Helter Skelter or In Cold Blood has there been such a terrifying story about multiple horrors Monkey on a Stick MURDER, MADNESS, AND THE HARE KRISHNAS by John Hubner and Lindsey Gruson 1 Contents: Authors’ Note on Methodology Prologue Krishna Names Chapter 1 BLOOD FEUD The Planting Party Dig A Hole Chapter 2 BLIND FAITH The Messiah and the Mott Street Gang Drop Out, Fall In, Sing Out Ambitious Pupil 2 Chapter 3 WINDS OF WAR A Guru Defects, the Beatles Enlist The Pretender’s Throne Clouds of Change Stocking God’s Treasury Chapter 4 The Primrose Path Marriage and Murder Made in Godhead Conning for Krishna Krishna’s Mules The Chosen Chapter 5 Chaos Plundering the Legacy Hansadutta: Secretary for God Krishna’s Arsenal Sex, Pigs, and Husbands Chapter 6 Shadows of Terror Black and Blue A Fork in the Path A Messianic Mission Jonestown in Moundsville Chapter 7 HolyWar Monkey on a Stick The Executioner’ s Trail Revenge from the Grave Chapter 8 GHOSTS Sex is Sex Expecting the Barbarians Going Fishing Epilogue Notes Acknowledgments 3 Front Flap On a crisp fall day in 1965, as America reeled from riots in Watts and Selma and students marched on Washing- ton to protest the bombing of North Vietnam, a 70-year-old retired Indian pharmaceutical executive stepped off a tramp steamer in the Port of New York. He had $7 in his pocket, the phone number of a friend, and a few cooking utensils. By the time he died twelve years later, Swami Prabhupada and his followers had built an em- pire on America’s disaffected youth, winning over the Beatles, amassing a fortune, and spreading Krishna’s word in 200 golden temples worldwide. The Hare Krishnas became a fixture in America’s urban landscape. With shaved heads, saffron robes, and beads, they took to the streets-chanting, rattling cymbals, begging, and engaging a generation. But the story has other endings. As the old swami lay on his deathbed, the seeds were sown that would destroy his legacy. As his followers clamored to succeed him, the movement splintered, grew venal and belligerent. His death signaled the horrors to follow. One guru used cult funds to record himself on rock and roll albums and acquire an arsenal of firearms. Another claimed to converse with Krishna himself while tripping on LSD. Other devotees abused women and sexually molested the young. The most ambitious and cruellest of them all, Swami Bhaktipada Kirtanananda, erected America’s Taj Mahal, the lavish Palace of Gold in West Virginia, which became headquarters for a drug ring and “enforcers” who punished and, in some cases, even murdered disloyal devotees. There was the murder of Chuck St. Denis, a devotee who wanted to start a Back Flap floral business with his wife’s inheritance —instead of giving the money to the temple. Next came the murder of disillusioned devotee Steve Bryant, who had launched a one-man holy war to prove his conviction that the movement had become a global criminal enterprise. They were “monkeys on a stick,” gruesome warnings to others who might dream of defection. Like Helter Skelter, this book is infused with horror and suspense and informed by exhaustive research. Monkey on a Stick is a spine-chilling look at the institutionalization of evil in the name of a god. Investigative journalists John Hubner and Lindsey Gruson masterfully blend the best traditions of thriller, expose, and rich generational history. From first page to last, this is an electrifying story of faith and betrayal, money and power, violence and obsession, murder and madness. Monkey on a Stick 4 For JILL and JANE Authors’ Note on Methodology This book is based on hundreds of hours of taped interviews with present and former devotees, hundreds of newspaper stories and magazine articles, and thousands of pages of trial transcripts. For two years, the authors have had unprecedented access to the movement’s internal documents and have benefited from the close cooperation of federal, state, and local law-enforcement officials. Most of the scenes depicted in this book are taken directly from the recollections of eyewitnesses and participants as recounted in interviews and trial transcripts. In addition, while conducting interviews and going through documents, the authors strove to discover what players in the drama were thinking and feeling. Dialogue, thoughts, and feelings have been re-created based on this research in an attempt to establish the essence of what occurred. In a few instances, the authors have created dramatizations based on their analysis of the participants’ personalities and on subsequent events. These instances are pointed out in the Notes. Of the scores of people the reader will encounter in this book, five are portrayed with pseudonyms to protect their privacy, and two are composite characters. These are also pointed out in the Notes. In general, the reader is encouraged to consult the supplementary information and documentation of- fered in the back of the book. 5 Prologue In the sixties, all things seemed possible. Flower power was going to end the war in Vietnam; rock and roll was going to liberate our uptight culture. And a religious movement started by an obscure Hindu mendi- cant was going to fulfill an Arnold Toynbee prophecy: that centuries from now, historians would see the fusion of Eastern and Western religions—not the development of the atom bomb or the battle between capitalism and communism—as the critical event of the midtwentieth century. The synthesis would begin when A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada arrived in New York City in 1965 carrying seven dollars in rupees, the phone number of the son of a friend, and a few battered cooking utensils. When Prabhupada died in Vrindaban, India, in 1977, the International Society for Krishna Con- sciousness, or ISKCON, the movement he started in a New York storefront, had over two hundred temples and farms in sixty countries, tens of thousands of followers, and tens of millions of dollars. In the United States alone, ISKCON had fifty-seven temples and farms, more than five thousand devotees, and thousands of uninitiated believers. Once grasped, the basic tenets of Krishna Consciousness are surprisingly simple. Man is not his body; he is an eternal spirit. The body goes through countless incarnations; the eternal spirit that is buried deep within us is unchanging and everpresent. Christians call it the soul; Krishna Consciousness calls it the atman. The purpose of life is to become one with the atman. This is harder than it sounds and usually takes many, many lifetimes. To reach the atman, we must defeat the ego. The ego would have us think that life is about accumulating money, exercising power and satisfying the senses’ unquenchable desires for sex, food, and countless luxuries. But the ego can be defeated and the atman uncovered by dedicating every action to God. “Whatever you do, make it an offering to me—the food you eat, the sacrifices you make, the help you give, even your suffering,” Krishna tells Arjuna in Chapter Nine of theBhagavad-Gita . To assure that every action is dedicated to God, devotees chant the names of the Lord. When they chant the Hare Krishna mantra (“Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare; Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama, Rama, Hare, Hare”), devotees believe that God is literally present on their lips. Krishna is a personal God, like the Jewish Yahweh and the Christian God. But part of Krishna Conscious- ness’ great appeal is that Krishna was a fun-loving, beautiful blue boy, not a wrathful Jehovah. And, in the sixties and seventies, Krishna Consciousness was exotic, it was new, it was fresh, it was from India, home of the Vedic scriptures, the world’s oldest revealed scriptures. It was also hard work. Many of the Catholics who joined the movement had decided the sin-confess-sin- confess cycle was meaningless; many of the Jews had decided that their synagogue was more of a social center than a holy place; many of the Protestants thought that the confirmation process in their churches was so easy, it was a joke. Krishna devotees were united by the belief that finding God is the hardest work you can do. They relished the opportunity to spread their new faith by chanting and begging for alms in public places. Some of the new devotees were spiritual people, genuinely dedicated to serving Krishna. Others were stoned-out hippies from troubled homes who had never had much to believe in. Heirs to fortunes, M.D.’s, and M.B.A.’s joined street people who had dropped out of high school. They shaved their heads and put on robes; they handed out literature and solicited money on street comers and in airports; they opened vegetarian restaurants and temples in major cities. They became part of the American scene, a bridge between East and West. “The fact that there is now in the West a vigorous, disciplined, and seemingly well-organized [religious] movement—not merely a philosophical movement or a yoga or meditation movement . is a stunning accomplishment,” said Harvey Cox, a Harvard divinity professor. 6 “The more I came to know about the movement, the more I came to find out there was a striking similarity between what [Prabhupada] was saying and my understanding of the original core of Christianity: Live simply; do not try to accumulate worldly goods or profit; live with compassion toward all creatures; live joyfully. When I say [Prabhupada was] ‘one in a million,’ I think that is in some ways an underestimate. Perhaps he was one in a hundred million.” In the beginning, the movement attracted thousands of people.

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