Cult Planned to Hide Out, Agents Say : Crime: The leading suspects in five Ohio slayings tried to arrange for care of their children so they could hide in Cleveland National Forest, authorities believe.

Cult leader Jeffrey Lundgren and his wife had arranged for a relative to come to San Diego to pick up the couple’s three minor children so Lundgren and a remaining small group of followers could hide out in the Cleveland National Forest, federal investigators said Thursday.

Andy Vita, special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms office in Los Angeles, said Lundgren’s wife, Alice, had asked her mother to come to San Diego from Missouri to retrieve the three younger children--ages 15, 10 and 9.

Apparently, Jeffrey Lundgren had planned to take his wife, 19-year-old son, Damon, and followers Kathryn R. Johnson and Daniel Kraft, Jr., into the wilderness after the children were picked up, investigators said.

Survivalist training was part of the group’s religious teachings.

Vita said that Alice Lundgren’s parents, who were not identified, “cooperated with the investigation” into the Lundgren family’s whereabouts “and gave us some insight of the group and their beliefs.” Vita refused to say whether the grandparents were also cult members or whether they had tipped off investigators about the National City motel where Lundgren, his wife and oldest son were arrested Sunday by authorities in connection with the murders of an Ohio family. Vita added that other group members “provided information about what was going on,” but he refused to elaborate further.

Alice Lundgren’s mother took custody of the Lundgren’s three minor children following Sunday’s arrests.

The Lundgrens and their oldest son, who are from Kirtland, Ohio, and Johnson and Kraft have been charged in the ritualistic slayings of an Ohio family of five. The bodies of Dennis and Cheryl Avery and three daughters--ages 13, 9 and 5--were discovered last week buried under a barn near Kirtland, where the cult lived on a farm. Federal agents said the Averys, who were cult members, were killed in a religious sacrifice.

Eight other cult members were arrested in the Midwest last week in connection with the killings.

Jeffrey Lundgren, 39, is an unfrocked minister of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Investigators said he declared himself a “prophet” of his own religion and founded a cult with 29 members.

Also on Thursday, federal agents displayed an impressive arsenal of weapons and survivalist gear taken from cult members. Vita said that a .45-caliber revolver owned by Lundgren and allegedly used in the killings also was recovered and was undergoing ballistic tests.

Agent George Rodriguez in Kansas City said agents were led to the bodies of the Avery family by an informant, who was told of the killings by a Missouri cult member.

Johnson, 36, of Holden, Mo., and Kraft, 25, of Nauvoo, Ill., were arrested Wednesday on rural California 79, north of Santa Ysabel in San Diego County. The pair had been the object of an intensive manhunt since Sunday and are believed to have been living at a campsite near Cleveland National Forest.

Johnson and Kraft, who were the last two persons arrested from a group of 13 cult members charged in the murders, will be arraigned in Municipal Court today. The Lundgrens were arraigned on Tuesday.