Posted 6/15/2004 05:08:00 PM by Douglas

It's only June, but the award for this year's most bizarre court case can already be handed out. In California, of course. Anytime you've got a Mormon assassination, Messianic death-cult and a Playboy Plamate, you can stop looking for a trial that's going to get any weirder.

This week, a jury in Martinez, a small town outside San Francisco, will retire to consider the bizarre, brutally violent cult surrounding one Glenn Taylor Helzer, a lapsed Mormon accused of bludgeoning and dismembering five people in an elaborate extortion racket intended to hasten the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Helzer, a former stockbroker who has already pleaded guilty and faces the death penalty, exerted a charismatic hold over an eclectic group of followers including his younger brother, a former girlfriend turned Playboy centrefold model, and a self-described "good witch" who once offered to raise money for Armageddon by appearing in porn films.

Of course she's a good witch! She's a porn star! It's just so amazing that this kind of person can manage to get so many people to not only listen to his insane rantings, but do their bidding as well. At what point of psychosis does this sound like a good idea?

The culmination of Helzer's plan was to have been an operation codenamed "Brazil", in which he would send South American orphans to Salt Lake City to kill the 15 elders who run the Mormon church.

According to Godman's testimony, Helzer imagined he could blame the murders on the "government behind government" and take over the leadership of the world's 12 million Mormons himself.

Right. Because that's what happens to people when their religious leaders are murdered.

Kookoo for cocoa puffs.