Ashline Susan - Without a prayer: the death of Lucas Leonard and how one church became a cult

WITHOUT A PRAYER

THE DEATH OF LUCAS LEONARD AND HOW ONE CHURCH BECAME A CULT

SUSAN ASHLINE

PEGASUS CRIME
NEW YORK LONDON

W ITHOUT A P RAYER

Pegasus Crime is an imprint of

Pegasus Books, Ltd.

148 West 37th Street, 13th Floor

New York, NY 10018

Copyright 2019 by Susan Ashline

First Pegasus Books hardcover edition August 2019

Interior design by Sabrina Plomitallo-Gonzlez, Pegasus Books

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

ISBN: 978-1-64313-072-9

ISBN: 978-1-64313-186-3 (ebk.)

Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

This is a true story. Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals. Those names are indicated by an asterisk. Excerpts from written material appear in italics and are reproduced exactly as they originally appeared, as far as spacing, spelling, grammar, and punctuation. The exception is Sarah Fergusons text messages and emails that were read aloud in court, during her trial. Those messages appear in italics but have been edited for an easier read.

For Lucas Benjamin Leonard, who deserved to live free.

CONTENTS

I feel for these people that Im about to tell you about, but you gotta listen to me. Its like the person who comes out of a cultthe bitterness, and the anger, and the resentment they feel toward those who lied to them, especially when they find out it was a lie, and they got out of it. But if you look at it from the truths point of view, youve got an individual came over, knelt down in front of somebody and said, Beat me. Please beat me. I wanna be beat. Now, in light of that, you know, what right do they have to be bitter and resentful of the people they told to beat em after they beat em?

P ASTOR J ERRY I RWIN
TO THE CONGREGATION ON N OVEMBER 10, 1996

Halloweenthe nightmares it representscame early for Chadwicks, New York, in 2015. It was three weeks before little devils and monsters would march the neighborhood carrying treat bags. A warm breeze was blowing orange and yellow leaves down Oneida Street. The sun was baking carved pumpkins on porches, turning their insides black and collapsing them into oozing messes, filling the air with a pungent odor. Temperatures hit an unseasonable seventy degrees at noon, allowing folks to revel in the light and warmth before an approaching long, dark winter. They were outside in T-shirts and shorts, playing kickball in the yard, walking the sidewalks with no destination. The joie de vivre was out of place against the backdrop of macabre neighborhood decor: foam tombstones, inflatable witches, giant cobwebs.

There, at the intersection of summers life and falls death, one building was unadorned. The Word of Life Building stood out on the block as having no Halloween decorations, yet a real horror story was playing out behind its walls.

There was a strange aura around that place. Thats what neighbors said of the old redbrick building after people moved there in the early 1990s and stamped Word of Life Building over the front door. Another sign pronouncing it a Christian church added to the mystery. Those words appeared to be the only indication of godliness. The people at the Word of Life Christian Church didnt welcome others. They shut them out.

The building and its new occupants became quite the curio. Many were saying it was a cult. Everyone was talking, and the rumors were more than small-town chitchat. It was intel gathered through personal experiences and grassroots espionage.

Stacey Brodeurs* home acted as a lookout for her visiting aunt from Florida, who was constantly entertained by the comings and goings across the street. She would peek out the windows and shout, Quick! Come look! Theyd watch a parade of cars pull into the church driveway. Someone would get out. Unlock the gate. Open the gate. Go inside. Close the gate. Disappear.

A Catholic church was on one side of the Word of Life Christian Church, and Tara Litz was on the other side. She rented the first floor of the house next door. Admittedly nosy, she was always watching from her window. From her backyard, she would climb the picnic table to peer over the wooden picket fence that her reclusive neighbors had put up along the property line.

There were German shepherds on a platform off the third story, and dogs on the roof that no one could see, only hear. Fireworks exploded from the roof at times, and there were bonfires on the asphalt shingles. One produced an odor so foul it made neighbors sick. Children could be seen in the parking lot, walking in a line. Cars pulled into the church at the same time each night, well after dark. And there was bizarre chanting. It wasnt language, but noisesweird noises. And there was an inexplicable, deafening whoosh, like a jet, and flames were involved.

The Word of Life Building was never a tired topic among the locals. They spoke of men, beefy and intimidating, walking the grounds in black trench coats even in the middle of summer. But what was actually playing out over many years behind those walls was far more sinister than the story line written in neighbors imaginations.

A colossal, three-story structure, the building was conspicuous in the row of residential homes on Oneida Street, the main road running through Chadwicks, located in central New York, outside the metropolitan area of Utica. The community isnt even large enough to constitute a village. Its technically a census-designated place, documented purely for statistical purposes. Simplified, its a community with a recognized name. And until Columbus Day 2015, Chadwicks was invisible to the rest of the world.