Former spiritual leader awaits judgment in jail.

By Scott Farwell
The Press-Enterprise

Chris Turgeon says he always felt alone, until God spoke to him. At first, his voice was distant and confusing, Turgeon says, like background music in the mall that doesn't go away when you walk outside. God told Turgeon to read the Bible and fast for three days. Then, God would deliver a message. But by the end of the third day, God had not spoken. Nothing.

And then it happened.

Turgeon says he was reading in the book of Ezekiel. The room fell away, turned black, except for a soft sliver of light that illuminated the words: "And they shall know a prophet has been among them." Turgeon, then 19, says God was telling him he was the prophet Elijah, a modern-day John the Baptist whose job is to prepare Christians for the end of the world.

As he tells the story, Turgeon is behind Plexiglas in a Chula Vista jail. He's leaning forward, his short hair and stubbly beard inches from the window, and his eyes are quick, scanning for a connection.

"My message is, turn away from your sins because the wrath of God is coming," said Turgeon, the 34-year-old former spiritual leader of a fringe religious group once known as the Gatekeepers, whose members still live in a remote, commune-style home outside Temecula. "Jesus came as a dove, and he will return as judge."

Turgeon also will be judged.

Riverside County sheriff's detectives say Turgeon and 28-year-old Blaine Applin were dressed in military fatigues, wore gas masks and carried AK47 assault rifles when they walked into Wieland Precision Machine shop in Lake Elsinore on July 2. Detectives say the men tied up eight workers, took their wallets, and then drove away in the company's new 1997 Nissan diesel truck.

Two weeks later, the men allegedly struck again. Wearing fatigues and wielding semi-automatic weapons, they allegedly robbed the Risque Lingerie store in San Diego. When an officer later tried to pull them over, police say the officer's car was sprayed with bullets. He escaped injury, and the pair was later taken into custody. Turgeon and Applin await trial this December in San Diego on charges of attempted murder, robbery and attempted robbery. Riverside County may prosecute them. But the pair faces another, more serious allegation. Seattle-area authorities say they murdered a fellow Gatekeepers member who split from their flock. If convicted in California, Turgeon and Applin face life sentences. The Washington prosecutor may seek the death penalty.

Of all Turgeon's memories of growing up in rural Oregon with his mother, stepfather and two siblings, one stands out. At 8 years old, he says he rose from the supper table without permission one night -- which usually would have provoked a beating from his stepfather -- and walked to the family Bible in the hallway. He opened it and began reading from Proverbs 17:1: "Better a dry crust with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting, with strife." His family, which had been yelling and arguing minutes before, turned to look at him, mouths agape. Turgeon says this is the first time God spoke to him, or more accurately, through him.

"Stuff like that has happened a lot in my life," said Turgeon, his voice soft amid the chaos of other inmates talking with their relatives on a Sunday morning visitation. "My family still talks about that."

But Turgeon's stepfather, Edward Turgeon, doesn't remember that spontaneous reading or anything else spiritual about Chris when he was growing up. Instead, he remembers the son who used to watch football games with his stepfather and the son whose hits as a football linebacker were delivered with such force players' helmets would come off. He remembers band concerts where Chris excelled at playing the saxophone and clarinet, skills he learned from his stepfather. He remembers being proud.

"Chris was a typical kid -- short attention span, hyperactive," said Edward Turgeon, a former machine gunner in the Marine Corps, who adopted the children when Chris was 4 years old. "If anything, I had a better relationship with him than the other kids because I looked at him as being talented with sports. I wanted to push the kid into something I couldn't do. "Now, I guess he believes he's a prophet," he said. "It's funny how religion can pervert the mind sometimes. Just look at those guys who bombed the embassies."

Turgeon says his stepfather brutalized him with a belt and his natural father used his fists to try to kill him while he was still in his mother's womb. But he says God's hand protected him. Years later, Turgeon says God revealed to him: "You are the Elijah to come. I did not allow your father to kill you or your mother to kill you. You are to bring a message of restoration and judgment on this world." Edward Turgeon admits spanking Chris when he was a child, but he also says he hugged him afterward.

"I didn't do anything worse than what I got," Edward said. "I did the best I could. Today they would probably call it abuse. Back then we called it discipline."

Turgeon's family members don't recognize these stories, or if they do, believe Chris is twisting them to fit his needs, says his brother Robert, a paralegal in Everett, Wash.

"When we were punished, we didn't get timeout or have our allowance stopped, we got our asses whipped," he said. "It wasn't abuse. We knew right from wrong, and as an adult, I'm glad I got what I got. We all grew up in the same household with the same set of parents, and yet Chris seems to have a different memory than the rest of us."

Robert Turgeon said Chris started out sincere about his religious calling, but as time passed he became more convinced that he was the exclusive voice for God.

"He comes on very harmless, monotone, preaching out of concern for you, blah, blah, blah," Robert said. "But eventually, it felt cultist because of his views on women and other things. He told us what to do, and if we didn't do it, we were damned. From that point on, it was impossible to have a logical conversation with him."

Adult life led Turgeon through a series of dead ends and religious revelations. Enrolled under a music scholarship at the University of Oregon, he quit after a year. "I just didn't feel like I was doing what I was supposed to be doing." He said he prayed and fasted. Then at 19, while attending Life Bible College in Los Angeles, came the revelation of being a prophet. Still, he said, God's message took awhile to sink in.

He married his wife, [JANE], and landed and lost several jobs. He even applied to the LAPD and Pasadena Police Department, but was rejected. He and his wife had a daughter, and moved back to Washington. At a time when he managed apartments in Seattle, Turgeon converted his first followers, drawn to him via Bible study class held in his apartment.

"He had a real knack for taking a Scripture and showing what it meant, and then bending it to make it fit his needs," said Glenn Applin, whose son is now in jail with Turgeon in San Diego. "You couldn't argue the Bible with him. If you brought up a Scripture that contradicted what he was saying, he would bring up three more."

During those days, Turgeon says God was talking to him. From a few times a week, he began to hear from God several times a day, and finally God would talk in his head all day.

"It would come out of nowhere," Turgeon said. "I could feel the power go through me and it would be accompanied by words or a vision. He would direct me to focus and I would see these people being molested or raped or being hit by their father, and God wanted me to speak it to them."

Turgeon says people were usually receptive. He says he would walk up to strangers and say, "God told me to tell you something." He says they usually responded, "Oh, really. What did He say?"

As membership grew over the next six years, the Gatekeepers lived in rural Washington. Turgeon tightened his grip on the group, even arranging marriages, according to police and former members. Brian Stevens, 26, said Turgeon paired him with a recent arrival, a 19-year-old woman. They had known each other less than a week when Turgeon told them God wanted them together. A month later, Turgeon married them. In 1992, Turgeon raised eyebrows around Washington when he called more than 200 churches to warn them that a rash of arson fires was a warning from God.

Turgeon taught that the world would end in year 2000 when Jesus Christ returns to Earth. Until then, Christian men are commanded to pick up guns in defense of their families against a one-world government led by Satan. He says the United Nations eventually will run the world, and President Clinton appears to be the Antichrist.

Turgeon's self-confidence and passion attracted potential converts, but police say his aggressive and confrontational style usually drove them out the door faster than they walked in.

"He fits the profile of someone who gains power over people by his charisma," said David Frankfurter, a professor of history and religious studies at the University of New Hampshire and an expert on apocalyptic cults. "He's got a great memory for things and a great facility and creativity for applying the Bible in people's lives. He incorporated a gun lust, which is so typical in many American religions. In many, many ways, he fits the profile of David Koresh."

Frankfurter says Turgeon's aptitude for music and clarity in a confusing world may have also seduced his followers.

"He has a tremendous sense of his own rightness," Frankfurter said. "Like Koresh, he takes great pains in the retelling of his past to highlight how God entered his world to say, `You are chosen. You are special.' "

At its height, Turgeon's followers numbered as many as 25, according to current members of the group. Among them was a 40-year-old tree trimmer, Dan Jess. Relatives say Jess was focused on the end of the world. He tried to convince them to stockpile a year's worth of food. He also talked about moving to the mountains to escape a corrupt society.

"Dan was a good person, not a violent person," said Edwin Jess, his father, who lives in Edmonds, Wash. "He was very religious, but how he got hooked up with that garbage, I'll never know."

After Jess joined his group, the Gatekeepers, family members say his religious convictions turned into obsessions.

"He would call and preach to me," said his sister, Juli Bendtsen. "There was also part of him that didn't trust the government. He said this was going to be a cashless society and those who didn't believe in it would be killed."

Police say Dan Jess worshiped with the group for several months before splitting off from Turgeon when he learned of some of the group's alleged illegal activities, including credit card fraud.

"He wanted to get away from them, but he was too tangled up in the web to escape," said Bendtsen. "They were afraid he would blow their cover. He told my aunt that he thought one of them was going to shoot him."

Last March, according to police in Mountlake Terrace, Wash., Jess was shot nine times when he opened the door to his trailer at 3 a.m. The first bullets hit Jess in the arm, police say, and as he turned to run he was shot repeatedly, at close range, in the back and buttocks. There were 11 rounds fired. A witness at the scene said a man matching Applin's description ran from the trailer after the shooting, according to Mountlake Terrace police Det. Mark Connor. Another witness said a man who looked like Turgeon drove the getaway car.

Police say Jess had spoken to group members days before he was killed. "For whatever reason, Dan was able to articulate his thought to Chris and that threatened Chris," said Connor. "That threat is what got Dan killed."

Turgeon says Jess was ejected from the group because he used drugs. He won't answer when asked whether he was involved in the slaying, but did say, "I'm not accused of killing, I'm accused of murder. The Bible says, there's a time to kill, a time to rejoice, a time for picking up stones and a time for casting away stones."

He says some killings are commanded by God. "I consider myself a warrior and a soldier in the truest sense. If God asked me to pick up a gun and go out and do his will, I would.

"King David killed tens of thousands of people," Turgeon said. "My heart is clean before the Lord. My conscience is clear."

(c) 1998 The Press-Enterprise Company.

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