7 Cultists Held in Slayings of Family at Farm

Federal and Missouri authorities Friday arrested seven members of a tiny, mysterious religious commune in the allegedly ritualistic slayings of five members of the same family, whose bodies were found this week on an Ohio farm.

Federal agents said five others were being sought, including the head of the cult, Jeffrey Lundgren, a defrocked minister of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who declared himself the “prophet” of his own religion. Also being sought are his wife, Alice, and their 19-year-old son, Damon.

All are charged with murder or conspiracy to commit murder.

“It’s a bizarre story,” said George A. Rodriguez, head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms office in Kansas City.

“Everyone being charged participated in some form or fashion in the murder of those five,” Rodriguez said, “either through active or passive involvement.”

Four of those arrested Friday have confessed, Rodriguez said, and five of the seven apparently will waive extradition. Rodriguez said agents stumbled on the unfolding tale as they interviewed an informant in an unrelated investigation on New Year’s Eve.

The bodies of Dennis Avery, 49; his wife, Cheryl, 42; and their three daughters, Trina, 13; Rebecca, 9, and Karen, 5, were found Wednesday and Thursday buried in a barn near Kirtland, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb. The faces, hands and feet of all five--all identified as one-time followers of Lundgren--were bound with duct tape. Each had been shot at least once, authorities said.

“It was sort of an execution-type slaying,” Lake County Coroner William C. Downing said.

The five were killed during a one-hour period sometime between April 16 and 18, said Rodriguez, on a farm occupied by the 29-member group, which lived as a commune.

Although authorities refused to discuss a motive for the murders, the Cleveland Plain Dealer said the slayings were part of a sacrificial ritual performed so commune members “would be cleansed and could search for a golden sword.” The sword reference was not explained. Law enforcement sources said Friday that they would not argue with the paper’s account.

However, the slayings may also have been related to a reported raid on the commune by the FBI in April. The Associated Press said that handguns, rifles and semiautomatic weapons were found at Lundgren’s home by agents investigating reports of death threats from people at the residence against leaders of the Reorganized Church in Kirtland and in other states.

Neighbors said the group left the Kirtland house hurriedly in mid-April, leaving behind chickens and rabbits. They became somewhat nomadic, authorities said, traveling first to West Virginia, then to southwestern Missouri, then to the suburbs of Kansas City and Independence, Mo.

The group broke up last month, reportedly because of allegations of sexual improprieties. The dissolution of the commune led directly to the discovery of the bodies, Rodriguez said.

He said his department learned of the case from a “confidential source” in a firearms case who said: “ ‘I had an unusual conversation with a member of a group who were doing some crazy things, maybe even murder.’ ”

“We talked to a member of the group,” Rodriguez continued, “and he had heard of murders but said he wasn’t involved.”

The federal agents referred the information to the Kirtland police department, which dug for three days on the farm of the Lundgren group before finding the first body, Rodriguez said.

Lundgren left the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 1988, after he was defrocked for “improprieties of conduct,” said the Rev. Dale Luffman, head the Kirtland congregation.

Roger Yarrington, a spokesman for the church, which is headquartered in Independence, Mo., said: “His minister’s credentials were taken away . . . because he had set up his own religion and was drawing a circle of people around him in this very secret, controlled religious society that was completely foreign to our beliefs.”

Followers of Lundgren “weren’t allowed to have any outside contacts,” Yarrington said. “They had to turn all their money over to him. And, because it was so secretive and tightly controlled, I don’t think anybody knows what they were up to or what they believed or what they were trying to do or why they were trying to do it.”

Lundgren was “very persuasive,” Luffman said, “with an innate ability to perceive a person’s vulnerability or need . . . and to utilize that need for other purposes.”

The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is not related to the larger Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, although both groups base their beliefs on both the Book of Mormon and the Bible.

Larry Green reported from Kansas City and Tracy Shryer from Chicago.