Couple in Theft Case Say It Was a Mission : Courts: Prosecutors charge the pair stole the life savings of a Glendale accountant. They are also suspected of killing the missing man.

A couple accused of stealing the motor home and life savings of a missing Glendale accountant were on a mission as “vagabonds for Christ,” a federal defense attorney told a jury in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

The religious mission was offered in opening arguments as the defense explanation for the behavior of Stanley Alan Hershey, 46, and his pregnant wife, Jan Vicki Fine, 38, who allegedly spent the accountant’s savings on travel and $2,500 silk suits.

The two former California schoolteachers with master’s degrees face 20 counts of fraud and theft in connection with the disappearance a year ago of Gordon T. Johnson, 62. Johnson was a retired employee of a subsidiary of Glendale Federal Bank. Authorities suspect Johnson was killed by Hershey and Fine, who prosecutors believe were compelled by inner spiritual voices into committing criminal acts.

Because Johnson’s body has not been found, no murder charges have been filed.

The jury trial began Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, where Hershey and Fine have been held without bail since their arrests March 1.

Hershey and Fine are accused of stealing Johnson’s motor home, his four-wheel-drive Suzuki and more than $120,000 in savings. Defense attorneys said they will argue that Johnson supported the religious mission and generously turned over his possessions. The defense has not yet explained the nature of a religious mission that included trips to Tahiti and expenditures on Italian suits.

Johnson disappeared on Oct. 15, 1989, while traveling with his dog in a motor home in Oregon. The FBI and authorities in several states say they believe that Johnson was slain and that his body may have been dumped in Shasta Lake in Northern California.

A federal grand jury indictment says Hershey and Fine stayed at two motor home parks--in Minnesota and Oregon--at the same time last fall as Johnson and left Oregon at the same time that Johnson disappeared.

The indictment charges that Hershey rented a boat at Shasta Lake on Oct. 16 and that Hershey and Fine began draining Johnson’s bank account by using his checks and bank credit cards for luxury purchases and travel, including a trip to Tahiti.

Hershey and Fine were arrested in Las Vegas by FBI agents after they were found driving a Suzuki owned by Johnson, according to court records.

A federal magistrate ordered the couple held without bail because he said the evidence “points a very strong finger of suspicion” at Fine and Hershey in the possible killing of Johnson.

Defense attorneys said the government has no proof that Hershey and Fine did not have permission from Johnson to use his credit cards, checking account or to drive and use his motor home and Suzuki.

But prosecutors argued Wednesday that after law enforcement officers found the motor home in Arizona, the couple fled to Las Vegas, where they went on a wild spending spree before their arrests.

Investigators have called the case one of the most bizarre they have encountered. They say the suspects apparently are disciples of the practice of “automatic writing,” in which spirits are said to guide peoples’ hands in spelling out their destiny.

Hershey and Fine met in 1987 while teaching at a private school for troubled and learning disabled teen-agers in Santa Monica. They were married in 1988 in New Orleans where Fine worked as a teacher and Hershey had a private counseling business and gave motivational talks on television.

Hershey’s former wife, who declined to be identified, said Hershey’s personality changed suddenly in 1986 when he said spirits told him to end their 13-year marriage, change jobs and change his life.

In her opening argument in defense of Fine, Federal Public Defender Franny Forsman portrayed Fine as an insecure, lonely woman who was unloved until she met Hershey. Forsman told the jury that Fine “believes that Hershey has a direct line to a spirit guide” and that she felt they had permission to do everything they did because the spirits told them so.