"Shoot him!" Drescher screamed at Reid. "Shoot him!"
St. Denis was hit twelve times. He crumpled and went down. But then, almost immediately, as Reid and Drescher watched in amazement, he struggled back onto his feet and half staggered, half ran back down the path toward the Blazer.
Drescher dropped his gun, ran after St. Denis, and dove into him, hitting him behind the knees. The big man went down. Drescher rolled him over and climbed onto his heaving chest.
"Get a knife!" Drescher yelled at Reid.
Reid felt like he was going to vomit. For an instant he thought about running away, but he was afraid if he did, Drescher would come after him and kill him, too. He ran into the cabin and came out with a kitchen knife.
"Chant!" Drescher was screaming. "Start chanting!"
Drescher thought he was doing St. Denis one last favor. Krishna had preached, "Those who remember me at the time of death will come to me. Do not doubt this." By forcing St. Denis to chant, Drescher thought he was guaranteeing him a more spiritual life in his next incarnation.
Drescher grabbed the knife and stabbed St. Denis. Again and again. Hard and deep. Finally, the blade hit a rib and snapped.
St. Denis fought on, shrieking in agony, coughing blood, and gasping for breath. Reid found a hammer and Drescher hit him with that, punching a one-inch hole in his skull. St. Denis went limp.
Drescher and Reid dragged St. Denis down the logging road to the dammed-up stream. They dumped the body on the swampy ground. Reid picked up one end of a plastic sheet, about to wrap St. Denis's head in it, when the big man opened his eyes.
"Don't do that, you'll smother me," he said.
Reid screamed—a long, piercing scream of pure terror.
Comment by Dirti Hari 1 minute ago
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Kirtanananda got his reaction when a deranged devotee bashed in his skull with a three-foot steel rod. He lived, but barely and ever after walked with a cane, suffering headaches and double vision. Even in his debilitated state, however, he was still able to direct the murder of Steve Bryant, the New Vrindaban exile who considered it his mission from Krishna to expose Kirtanananda's abuses, and had been publishing the embarrassing truth.
Chuck St. Denis, as you can read in the chapter below, did not die easy. Two gunmen pumped twelve .22 caliber rounds into him. He was stabbed repeatedly in the chest with a kitchen knife and a screwdriver. As the life fled from him he howled like a dog. His cranium was fractured with a hammer. He opened his eyes and spoke to his killers after they were sure he was finally dead. His killers buried him under a stream, which is probably a good way to make a spirit unquiet, if such a thing can be done. His cries, which vanished into the West Virginia night, unheard by anyone who chose to care or help, were never silenced. They kept people up at night, caused rage to burn in the hearts of the injured, and destroyed the sleep of the idiot mice-like devotees who hid themselves in the warm darkness of oblivion, chanting and surrendering their souls to Krishna.
Chuck St. Denis screamed and screamed and screamed until finally the cops found his body, dug it up, and put the horror to rest.Or so they say ...
Go to Chapter 1: The Planting Party
The gurus who succeeded Prabhupada theoretically accepted the premise that to find God, the ego must be defeated. And yet with few exceptions they had huge egos. Religious scholars say that a crisis occurs when the charismatic leader of a new religious movement dies. The success or failure of the movement depends upon how the successors spread the teachings of the founder. To a large degree, Krishna Consciousness is in shambles because too many gurus did not want to spread Prabhupada's teachings; they wanted to be Prabhupada. Because of that, the Hare Krishna movement degenerated into a number of competing cults that have known murder, the abuse of women and children, drug dealing, and swindles that would impress a Mafia don.
Since 1987, reformers in the movement have worked to purge ISKCON of the horrors portrayed in this book. They hope to restore the spiritually powerful principles on which the movement was founded. But this is the story of how the destructive metamorphosis happened; of how good became evil; of how gurus claiming to embody Krishna's mercy behaved with no mercy. And no power, as we will discover, corrupts as absolutely as fanatical religious power.
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