Darkness at the Edge of Town (Iris Ballard #2)(76)
“I’m also a forensic psychologist with almost a decade in the FBI. I can help. If you let me.”
Echolls leaned in to whisper to his underling’s ear. Carmichael slowly blinked and momentary scowled before the men broke apart. His scowl deepened when he looked back at me. Ha, ha. I won.
“Mathias Morning was born Samuel Hans Mueller in Lancaster County seventy-three years ago,” Carmichael started. “He was raised Amish, if you can believe it. Parents remained together; he was the third of seven children; nothing spectacular about his childhood beyond the obvious. His first arrest was when he was eighteen for possession and check-kiting with one Kenneth Young, former Marine dishonorably discharged for theft and conduct unbecoming, who we believe was and is his lover. During that arrest, Young assaulted a police officer and received five years in prison, Samuel only one. When Samuel was released he returned to the Amish community. He married and had two children, but when Young was released, Samuel left the community soon after. They went west and joined a hippie community, while also running drugs for the Hell’s Angels. Young was arrested again for trafficking and went away for fifteen years. Samuel wasn’t arrested, for that at least. He did go back to kiting checks and various frauds, with a few months in jail here and there. We think it was about 1971 when he came across the Jim Jones cult in Northern California.”
“You’re kidding me,” Luke said.
“Nope. He lived at the compound in Ghana for a few months, but must have seen the writing on the wall and got out while he could,” Carmichael continued. “Within a year of leaving, he was running his own little group called Victory Rise back in San Francisco. Mostly gay men doing outreach and mobilizing, but really Samuel, then David Marshall, was collecting bank information from his members. All told, when he vanished, he had twenty-five grand.”
“Was he arrested?” I asked.
“No. By the time he surfaced again the statute of limitations had run out. He’d fled to Canada and was living under a false identity for ten years. He’d started his own little commune just outside Niagara Falls. Had about forty people there, including two women who claimed he was their baby daddy. The commune was a way point for cocaine, heroin, and pills coming into or leaving the US. When we and the Mounties stormed the place, Mathias made a deal with the Canadians to remain in the country and got only three years.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“He did get shivved in prison if it’s any consolation. He almost died. Spent his time in solitary and vanished again when he got out. We think he and Ken reunited and went to Mexico. With their law enforcement mess down there, who the fuck knows what they got into. It wasn’t until 1998 that he popped up again in Phoenix, this time as the leader of a doomsday cult. There were a million of those cults, and his group was small, only about sixty people, but I got a tip from an informant that the compound was a way station site for the Sinaloans. It took a year, but we got a couple members to flip. One member even tipped us off to when the drugs would arrive. Boom, we got them, right? The fucker should have been put away for life, but our two key witnesses met unfortunate ends. One hung himself and the other was murdered in her cell by another cult member. The murderer told us the world was about to end, so why the hell not, huh? Samuel had those people so hosed. They actually believed he could save them from Y2K. They were creepy as fuck. Like the Brady Bunch meets the S.S.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” I said. “Any proof he was involved in the killings?”
“None we found, and we fucking looked. Still, Samuel got twenty years up in Atwater. Young got the same in Atlanta, but Samuel was such a model prisoner they granted his request in 2005 to join his boyfriend. Once again, model prisoner. Helped others earn their GEDs, helped with appeals, even got involved with the drug rehab programs there. Due to overcrowding and good behavior, he was out in 2014. He returned to Rebersburg near Lancaster and reconnected with some of his family, including Betsy Snow. His great-granddaughter.”
My mouth flopped open. “Betsy’s his great-granddaughter?”
“Yes. It was actually her parents who contacted me, which of course you know using any technology is a big deal to the Amish. I’d interviewed the family back in ’98, so they knew me. Betsy wasn’t even alive then. Samuel had been writing to them all from prison and his grandson Peter, Betsy’s father, was one of the few who responded. Betsy too. When he was released, Samuel spent a little over a year in Rebersburg, working, being a model parolee, but the moment he was no longer under parole, he was out of there. Young had a cousin who put him up in Dunlop and Samuel joined them. ‘Mathias’ had already begun recruiting for his new cult back in Rebersburg. Helen joined them, Megan soon after, and when they were on rumspringa Betsy and two of her friends, Hannah and Ruth, eventually came too. He must have been grooming them, or really Betsy was. I would have known about Samuel’s new enterprise a lot sooner, but I was still stationed in Phoenix, and it took almost a year for the Snows to find out what happened to their daughter. They just assumed she’d left after the rumspringa. Kids do. When Ruth’s parents finally heard from their daughter, they told the Snows, who called me. It took about two months for me to convince my superiors to transfer me here and open an investigation.”
“What have you done since?” Luke asked.