Kirtland cult members' letters talk of renewal, doubt

Luff and Bluntschly correspond with minister

Cleveland Plain Dealer/November 5, 2006
By Maggi Martin

By the time Jeffrey Lundgren fired bullets into the heads of a Kirtland couple and their three daughters 17 years ago, he had so twisted the religious fervor of followers Ron Luff and Sharon Bluntschly that they were convinced they participated in the murders as a sacrifice to God.

The gunshots set Lundgren, Luff and Bluntschly on personal journeys. Lundgren's ended Oct. 24 with a 17-step walk to a room in Lucasville prison where he was executed by lethal injection.

Bluntschly's ended a few years earlier, also in a prison, when she walked up the stairs of a chapel to be baptized as a Christian, renewing her devotion to God. She had worked for years to understand how her faith could lead her to commit atrocities. She had long rejected the idea of redemption. But there she stood in a prison yard, a believer once more.

Luff still struggles along his path. He knows the murders were wrong, but he also knows he believed as deeply as anyone can believe that when he helped slaughter the Dennis Avery family, he was in service to God. He wants to recommit himself to faith but is afraid. If his passion for God could be manipulated into a murderous rampage once, could a renewed faith be twisted for evil, too?

"I could never have participated in such a terrible crime had I not been 100 percent sure it was God's command. Yet I was wrong. How can I ever be that certain again?" Luff wrote in a letter from prison to a local minister in August 2001.

Luff and Bluntschly have not walked alone. Their escort has been the Rev. Chuck Patterson, pastor of Our Father's House Church on Cleveland's West Side. Patterson has visited often with both, and his years-long correspondence with them chronicles their efforts to break the cult's bonds and find faith again.

"They have both strolled past forgiveness," Patterson said of Luff and Bluntschly, who declined through prison officials to be interviewed.

"They have come to realize what they did was wrong, but they came to that realization at different times and in different ways. If they really do want to make things right, I am obligated to help them."

In early days in prison, Bluntschly trusted no one

After the murders but before she was convicted, Bluntschly was free on bail, living with her parents on their Michigan farm. She spent each day in terror.

"I still believed Jeff was invincible. Could he know all my thoughts? And would he kill me and my family like he said he would?" Bluntschly wondered, according to her letters to Patterson in April 2001. "I would cry to myself trying to figure out when Jeff would come. How could I warn my mom & dad? How could they be defended against such a monster. Where would I hide my baby? Would she cry and give herself away??"

Bluntschly grew up in a family of five, all devout members of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a splinter group from the Mormons. After attending Graceland College in Iowa, she moved to Missouri, where she served as a tour guide at the church's auditorium.

She earned a coveted internship at the historic Kirtland temple, considered a holy pilgrimage because of the temple built there in 1833 by founder, Joseph Smith. Lundgren, a tour guide at the temple, found the church's birthplace a perfect place to erect his conservative pulpit. Lundgren's controversial Bible classes soon cost him his job. Bluntschly found herself drawn to Lundgren's headquarters on a Kirtland farm, in the shelter of a family of believers that he was gathering.

Eventually, Lundgren corrupted their devotion and convinced them that they should sacrifice a family to prove their faith. While Lundgren pulled the trigger, all 10 of the cult members assisted in various ways in the deaths of Dennis and Cheryl Avery and their daughters, Trina, 15; Rebecca, 13; and Karen, 7.

Some cult members were assigned to keep the Averys occupied before the shootings. Others helped bind them. Some were ordered to run a chainsaw to blunt the sound of the bullets or assist in burying the bodies in a pit.

Bluntschly's duty was to keep the children occupied in the kitchen while their parents were killed.

After the murders, and the collapse of the Lundgren cult, Bluntschly was sent to the Ohio State Reformatory for Women, where she is serving eight to 25 years. She shared a cottage with Betty Parish, an inmate convicted of killing her husband, a preacher's son. Parish helped convince her that Lundgren's twisted Scriptures were phony interpretations.

Bluntschly at first resisted any religious group at prison.

"The lies, deception and manipulation I had experienced in my life left me with feelings of betrayal. It took a year reading and discussing before I could really open up my heart again to God without trembling like a leaf inside and out," Bluntschly wrote in September 2001.

"I had never lost faith in God, but the horrific experiences I'd been through had caused me to put up immediate defenses whenever I was in hearing distance of someone, especially a man expounding on the Bible."

She began her path back to faith when she joined a Bible study class and began making clothes and dolls for local charities.

Luff comes to terms with what he did

It took 10 years for Luff to start re-examining religion.

"I've got some things to work out in my own faith, I still have not been to chapel [in 10 years] which speaks volumes about a shift in my spiritual motivation," he wrote in July 2001.

Luff's family had been members of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Missouri for five generations. By age 14, Luff had participated in more than a dozen missionary trips to Texas, Colorado and Kansas.

After six years in the Navy, he married a distant cousin, Susan, also a staunch believer. Luff learned about Lundgren having religious visions, and friends told him a trip to Kirtland to meet Jeff would be a dream come true. With two children in tow, the family took a trip to the Kirtland temple, a trip Luff equated to a Christian visit to the Holy Land.

Considered second in command in the cult, Luff helped with taping each of the Averys before they were shot. He gave the youngest, 7-year-old Karen, a piggyback ride to her death.

Luff recognizes many people will have little sympathy for the former cult. But he claims all the members are victims of Lundgren's lunacy.

"The devastation that occurred that night is irreversible both to the family killed and to those of us who were not," wrote Luff. He wants the world to understand their journey in hopes that another cult-laced killing will never occur.

"My life such as it once was came to an end as a result of my being duped by a religious belief. I've lost much of the passion I once had for the Lord. Actually it's still there, it's just buried in the muck and mire of too much loss and failure. And for the first time in my life, I find myself doubting God. That's something I've never known before," he wrote in September 2001.

A Cleveland minister works through letters

Patterson, 70, leads a small Pentecostal congregation at Our Father's House Church at West 114th Street and Detroit Avenue in Cleveland. His passion is prison ministry. He has traveled to most prisons in Ohio and to some in Michigan and Indiana to offer salvation to incarcerated souls. He has helped open halfway houses for released inmates.

He conducts his ministry mainly through letters, and his file drawers bulge with correspondence from jails as far away as California. He addresses the inmates as "precious vessels for the Lord's use," apologizing for preaching with his pen when he cannot preach in person.

Everyone has a need to feel the Lord's presence, even if only in a letter, Patterson said.

He offered to correspond with Luff and Bluntschly after meeting them through his counseling efforts with Parish, Bluntschly's cellmate. Parish had corresponded with Luff after being introduced through Bluntschly.

Patterson had read about the cult and sat through some of the trials. He thought he could help the cult members. Luff and Bluntschly accepted his offer.

The minister said he could see a changing view for salvation in the scores of letters he received.

Patterson said Bluntschly dreamed of getting baptized for six years. "I'll soon receive the desire of my heart. I knew I had to face my fears," Bluntschly said in a letter seeking permission for the baptism.

Patterson described Bluntschly's prison baptism as one of the most moving he has ever officiated at. As she walked out of the small chapel, dozens of other inmates gathered up the road and when Sharon emerged, the prison yard erupted in applause. Bluntschly glowed.

"The last vestiges of fear vanished along with it the crippling feeling of betrayal and most importantly the deep anger that was trapped within me just disappeared. That burden was lifted and replaced with peace," she wrote.

After years of introspection, Luff wrote a lengthy piece for Watchmen Ministries, a prison advocacy group, and attempted to explain the religious fanaticism that led to murder.

That same theme repeats in his letters.

"Outsiders were simply dead. Eventually those in cult were only ones who truly exist," he wrote adding that they became so brainwashed they agreed to the Avery murders as a means of finding their own salvation.

Patterson said he worries about the remaining nine cult members in prison and how they have coped with Lundgren's recent execution. He has tried to reach others, but they have not accepted his help.

"He will always have a presence," Patterson said of Lundgren. "People like Jeff worship the devil. They distort the Bible, connecting different portions to fit their deceit. As believers of any faith, we need to learn to read the Bible ourselves."

Luff said that, while Lundgren's grip is broken, there is still a need to try to understand the dangers of cults who turn loyal followers into fringe fanatics.

"To see some purpose, some good come out of all this would do wonders for resolving many of my questions and doubts. So I continue to ask that God forgive me and that he can make good come from this very tragic situation," Luff wrote in one of his last letters.

Patterson said he believes everyone is entitled to find redemption.

He does not know if Lundgren had, or ever will. But he hopes Luff and Bluntschly will continue.

"True repentance is not just about seeking forgiveness. There has to be some change. This will be a long journey," Patterson said. "I hope I can encourage them to keep walking."