Kirtland cult killings: LaTourette worked toward justice for the Averys
The News-Herald, Ohio/December 30, 2014
By David Glasier
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third in a four-part series looking back at the events surrounding what would become known as “The Kirtland Cult Killings” and the recollections 25 years later of the local authorities who were faced with the aftermath.
The defining moment of Steve LaTourette’s career in public service did not unfold in Washington, D.C., where he spent 18 years in Congress representing Northeast Ohio out of the 14th and, later, 19th U.S. House districts.
Rather, that moment came in 1990 when, as Lake County prosecutor, LaTourette oversaw four jury trials that produced guilty verdicts and a series of plea deals tied to the Kirtland cult killings.
It was, many observers said, a career-making case for LaTourette, then 35 years old and beginning his second year as prosecutor.
“The first thought in my mind was a negative one, that you can’t screw up this case or it could be a career-ender,” LaTourette said recently during a telephone interview from his home in Virginia.
“Somewhere in the back of my mind, yes, I sensed there was an opportunity,” LaTourette added. “But I also was keenly aware the whole county was focused on seeing justice done for the Averys.”
LaTourette and his team of assistant prosecutors and special prosecutors, in concert with local and national law enforcement professionals, secured that justice.
The most prominent of the defendants, paramilitary cult leader Jeffrey Lundgren, was found guilty and sentenced to death for the murders of Dennis Avery, his wife Cheryl and the couple’s three children.
Lundgren was executed by lethal injection in October 2006.
Ten other cult members were hit with long prison terms for their complicity in the murders.
Three of the four individuals still incarcerated, including Lundgren’s wife and oldest son, received sentences so stiff they will die behind bars.
For his work on the cases related to the worst mass murder in Lake County history, LaTourette in 1990 was named Ohio Prosecutor of the Year.
“Steve had a lot of things going for him in the first place, but that sure gave him a lot of name recognition,” Lake County Sheriff Daniel Dunlap said.
At the time of the Kirtland cult killings, Dunlap was a lieutenant in the Sheriff’s Office. On Jan. 4, 1990, he was sent to the barn at 8671 Chardon Road to assist in the recovery of the five bodies.
John O’Donnell, set to be sworn in Jan. 5 as a judge in Lake County Common Pleas Court, was on LaTourette’s team of assistant prosecutors in 1990.
“Steve didn’t have to do anything to make it a career-making case,” O’Donnell said.
“I remember turning on the TV news one night and there he was, at the airport, standing in front of a bank of microphones, giving a news conference,” O’Donnell added. “It was national story right off the bat.”
While he doesn’t minimize his role in the prosecutions of Lundgren and his accomplices, LaTourette prefers to steer the lion’s share of credit to others.
“I was lucky to be surrounded by some really great lawyers and police officers who worked so hard on these cases,” LaTourette said.
“Many times I felt overwhelmed with this major undertaking suddenly on the table,” LaTourette added. “There were some sleepless nights.”
In November 1994, running as a Republican, LaTourette outpolled Democratic challenger Eric Fingerhut and two independent candidates to win the 19th District House seat.
At the same time, appeals of the four jury verdicts in the Kirtland cult killings were working their way through the courts.
Looking back
LaTourette is quick to acknowledge there was an initial misstep in his handling of the cult killing case.
Speaking to reporters shortly after witnessing the removal of the Avery bodies from the burial pit in the barn, LaTourette voiced a strong, unfiltered opinion about Jeffrey Lundgren and the other 12 cult members against whom he had obtained multi-count felony indictments.
“These people are not insane,’’ LaTourette said at the time. “They’re the cruelest, most inhumane people this county has ever seen. They’re going to die in the electric chair for these crimes.”
Twenty-five years hence, LaTourette attributes the intemperate tone of that statement to anger that had welled up in him as a prosecutor and as a father.
“I did a bad job of keeping my emotions in check,” LaTourette said. “What I’d seen in that barn really made me angry. I was with some pretty grizzled veterans of law enforcement in there. To a person, they were badly shaken.”
LaTourette soon recovered his emotional equilibrium.
Over the next 12 months, the Lake County Prosecutor’s Office gained convictions against Lundgren, his wife, Alice Lundgren, their son, Damon Lundgren and cult follower Ronald Luff in highly publicized jury trials.
Another cult member, Daniel D. Kraft, avoided a jury trial by pleading guilty to multiple counts of aggravated murder and kidnapping.
Alice and Damon Lundgren, Ronald Luff and Kraft still are imprisoned.
Plea deals were reached with six defendants who agreed to provide testimony is exchange for reduced charges. All of those defendants have been paroled. Five of them spent just shy of 20 years behind bars before re-gaining their freedom.
“I took plenty of criticism for making those (plea) deals, but I felt we very much needed to make them,’’ LaTourette said.
With the passage of time, LaTourette gained some measure of empathy for the six individuals who took plea deals.
“They were normal people who weren’t evil,” LaTourette said. “It’s almost like we were catching them at the end of a drug-induced nightmare.”
LaTourette was told some of those former cult members harbored ill will toward him for having to spend so much time in prison.
“I didn’t lose any sleep over their complaints,” LaTourette said. “Maybe they weren’t in the barn that night, but they did nothing to stop the killings, nothing. I could never get past that.”
LaTourette had first chair in the murder trial of Jeffrey Lundgren. He was infuriated by the self-styled prophet’s matter-of-fact admission that he killed the Averys to fulfill what he interpreted as God’s will.
“My opinion of (Jeffrey) Lundgren grew worse over time,” LaTourette said. “The deeper you dug, the more you realized he didn’t even believe what he was teaching. His whole life was figuring out how to use people so he didn’t have to work.”
LaTourette chose to be present when Lundgren was executed by lethal injection on Oct. 24, 2006.
The specter of the cult killing case arose again for LaTourette two years ago when Ronald Luff contacted him by letter from prison.
Luff requested some trial records from LaTourette for an unknown purpose.
“In the letter, he asked if I could ever find room in my heart to forgive him,” LaTourette said. “I told him I can’t.”
Moving forward
LaTourette retired from Congress in December 2012, at the end of his ninth term.
Now 60 and living in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., he maintains a presence on the national political scene as president of McDonald Hopkins Government Strategies, a lobbying firm.
He also is affiliated with Main Street Partnership, a moderately conservative advocacy group, as president and chief executive officer of the Board of Directors.
Charles Coulson, who succeeded LaTourette as Lake County prosecutor in 1995 and still holds the job, represented the county in appeals of the Kirtland cult killing jury trial verdicts.
All of the verdicts were upheld.
Coulson said the work he did on those appeals left him with the highest regard for the handling of the cases on LaTourette’s watch.
“I get chills. The way those cases were presented by Steve and his team of prosecutors was as professional as it gets,” Coulson said.
Dunlap, the sheriff since January 1993, makes no secret of his personal and professional admiration for LaTourette.
“Every time I see Steve, I tell him the same thing, ‘Thanks for helping me be the sheriff. Without you, I probably would never have made the leap,’” Dunlap said. “I’m not a risk-taker and he convinced me I could do this.”
Dunlap remembers being with LaTourette during one of the 1990 cult killing trials when a key piece of evidence was nowhere to be found as LaTourette was about to return to the courtroom.
“I would have gnashed my teeth and been very upset,” Dunlap said. “Steve said, ‘It’s somewhere in the world and we’ll just have to move on without it right now.’”
Dunlap often shares that recollection with young men and women in the police academy.
“You find out what a person is really made when faced with adversity,” Dunlap said. “When I saw Steve take such a calm, collected approach in what could have been a really stressful situation, I knew he really had it together.”
In August 2014, LaTourette underwent surgery on his pancreas at Cleveland Clinic. The nature of the illness that led to the surgery is undisclosed.
Stephen C. LaTourette profile
• Born in Cleveland on July 22, 1954
• Graduate of Cleveland Heights High School (1972), University of Michigan and Cleveland State’s John Marshall College of Law
• Began his legal career in 1978 as police prosecutor in Kirtland Hills
• Worked in Lake County Public Defender’s Office 1979-80
• Ran for Lake County Prosecutor in 1984, lost to incumbent John Shoop by 15,000 votes
• Ran for Lake County Prosecutor in 1988, beat Michael Cicconetti by 4,400 votes.
• Ran for U.S. House of Representatives, 19th District, in 1995. Received 48 percent of the votes to defeat Democratic incumbent Eric Fingerhut and two independent candidates.
• Re-elected to U.S. House in 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002 (now District 14), 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010.
• Announced on July 31, 2012, he would not seek re-election to a 10th term.
• Now living in Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. Affiliated with two moderate conservative advocacy groups, Main Street Partnership and McDonald Hopkins Government Strategies.
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