Connecticut prosecutors close the books on a strange case of murder in a cult

Hartford Courant, Connecticut/February 2, 2022

By Edmund H. Mahony

State prosecutors have closed the books on the strange, 17-year-old murder of the self-described chief apostle to Brother Julius Schacknow, a Connecticut cult leader who turned his claim to divinity into a multimillion-dollar business and real estate empire in the 1970s and ‘80s.

New Britain State’s Attorney Brian W. Preleski dismissed murder charges against against 77-year old accused killer Rudy Hannon, who died last month in prison after contracting COVID-19 while awaiting trial. Last week, Hannon’s co-defendant in the murder case, Sorek Minery, 45, was sentenced to 20 years in prison suspended after nine years.

The two men were accused of beating to death, freezing, dismembering and burying Paul Sweetman, who was second in command of the religious cult known as “The Work,” founded by the charismatic Schacknow, who died in 1996 at age 71. Preleski has said in court that Hannon and Minery - who turned on one another after their arrests, each accusing the other - committed the crime at a time when there was a struggle among cult leaders for control after Schacknow’s death.

Schacknow was a slightly built man, who had piercing green eyes, wore a full beard and liked to appear in a white robes. He called himself a “sinful messiah” who, as he explained, had to sin to know what sin was like. He was accused of having a voracious sexual appetite and of grooming girls and young women in the cult for sex. Over time, his explanation of himself moved from prophet to Jesus Christ incarnate to God.

While Schacknow was proclaiming divinity in the late 1970s, his Meriden-based cult was generating as much as $100 million in income, primarily through real estate and construction businesses that included the then most profitable Century 21 real estate franchise on the east coast and now defunct County Wide Construction. At his peak, Schacknow’s followers, numbered about 300 and many worked for the businesses, investigators said.

According to information presented in court, the events leading to Sweetman’s murder began in a dispute between he and his wife Joanne Sweetman for control of the cult and its income after Schacknow’s death. Joanne Sweetman, in addition to being a top cult leader known as the “holy spirit,” was a top officer in its real estate business and one of Schacknow’s former wives.

Joanne Sweetman allegedly wanted Paul Sweetmen dead so she could control the businesses, according to court filings and other material presented in court.

“Mrs. Sweetman enlisted co-defendant Rudy Hannon, who is the biological son of Brother Julius, to eliminate Paul Sweetman,” Preleski has said in court. “That was in large part motivated by profit.”

Joanne Sweetman died in 2011 before she could be charged, he said.

Hannon recruited Minery, who eventually confessed after agreeing in a deal with prosecutors to testify against Hannon, Preleski said.

Minery told the police, according to an arrest warrant, that Hannon spent months persuading him that Paul Sweetman “needed to be killed because he was hurting his wife, Joanne Sweetman, and that God would have wanted them to kill [Paul] Sweetman.”

Paul Sweetman, then 70, was beaten to death in 2004, inside Blue Ridge Construction, Minery’s Plainville-based business. Police say Hannon and Minery were both involved in the death, but each pointed at the other in statements to New Britain detectives.

The case was dormant until 2016, when New Britain detectives were able to link a human thigh found by a dog 12 years earlier to Sweetman, who vanished and had by then been reported missing.

New Britain detectives arrested Hannon and Minery in 2018.

Minery told police he and Hannon stuffed Sweetman into freezer in his shop. He said he returned to the shop three or four days later and dismembered the body with an electric saw. He said he buried the head and legs in a shallow grave on land near the New Britain reservoir, and buried the torso and arms beneath a shed at his New Britain home.

Hannon, who was scheduled for trial when he died, gave police a slightly different story. He said he watched Minery beat Sweetman brutally, but helped stuff the body in the freezer. He claimed he believed Sweetman was still alive and Minery allegedly put something heavy on top of the freezer to keep Sweetman inside.