This may be the year of the celebrity trial - Michael Jackson the King of Pop on child molestation charges, the basketball star Kobe Bryant accused of rape, the legendary record producer Phil Spector indicted for murder - but the kookiest, darkest, most grimly compelling court case in America may well be one that is receiving almost no media attention at all.
This week, a jury in Martinez, a small town outside San Francisco, will retire to consider the bizarre, brutally violent cult surrounding one Glenn Taylor Helzer, a lapsed Mormon accused of bludgeoning and dismembering five people in an elaborate extortion racket intended to hasten the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Helzer, a former stockbroker who has already pleaded guilty and faces the death penalty, exerted a charismatic hold over an eclectic group of followers including his younger brother, a former girlfriend turned Playboy centrefold model, and a self-described "good witch" who once offered to raise money for Armageddon by appearing in porn films.
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Thursday, 17 June 2004 00:05 (twenty-two years ago)
I think we've already had that year.
― Sym (shmuel), Thursday, 17 June 2004 02:38 (twenty-two years ago)
― roger adultery (roger adultery), Thursday, 17 June 2004 02:40 (twenty-two years ago)
This whole story is fucking bizarre. Anything having to do with Mormons killing people freaks me out for some reason. I want to know more about these organized "self-realization" classes that Glenn Helzer took his girlfriend to; who ran them?
Case where otherwise normal or seemingly sane people fall completely under the sway and influence of someone else freak me out to no end.
― kyle (akmonday), Thursday, 22 July 2004 17:27 (twenty-one years ago)
― Huck, Thursday, 22 July 2004 17:57 (twenty-one years ago)