Second Connecticut man involved in killing of reputed cult leader dies in prison, officials say

New Canaan Advertiser, Connecticut/October 2, 2024

By Lisa Backus

Somers — A Burlington man sentenced in the 2004 cold case murder of Paul Sweetman, a reputed leader in the Brother Julius cult, died last week in prison, officials confirmed.

Sorek Minery, 48, was serving a nine-year sentence for his role in Sweetman's killing and dismemberment when he died Sept. 25 at a hospital after being taken there from Willard-Cybulski Correctional Institution where he was incarcerated, officials said. Determining his cause of death requires further studies, the state Office of the Medical Examiner said.

His death does not appear to have been suspicious and he was surrounded by family when he died at the hospital, according to a spokesperson for the state Department of Correction.

Minery and Rudy Hannon were charged by New Britain police with Sweetman's murder in 2018. Hannon, then in his 70s, died from COVID-19 complications in 2022 while awaiting trial in the case, his attorney said. A week later, Minery received his sentence after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit murder.

Hannon, court officials said, was the biological son of Julius Schacknow, known as Brother Julius by his followers.

Minery, who pleaded no contest to conspiracy to commit murder in Sweetman’s death, was given a 20-year prison sentence, suspended after nine years served, during an appearance at Superior Court in New Britain in 2022. He had been incarcerated since his arrest in July 2018.

“This was an awfully unusual case,” Brian Preleski, then New Britain state’s attorney, said at time of Minery's sentencing. As a state's attorney, Preleski prosecuted Hannon and Minery, he since has become a state Superior Court judge. “We don’t often see cases of this nature that spans decades and in terms of the relationships of the parties involved. And it went out with a whimper," Preleski said in 2022.

Schacknow was accused of enlisting hundreds of residents from the Northeast in the 1970s and '80s to join the cult, which discouraged education or any free thought, former followers said, according to court documents.

Sweetman became the leader of the cult when Schacknow died in 1996, former members said, according to court documents, and was living in Southington when he disappeared in 2004.

According to an arrest warrant, Hannon and Minery, who was living in Burlington when he was arrested, killed Sweetman in Plainville in 2004, placed his body in a freezer and then dismembered him, burying his remains at various locations in New Britain.

But New Britain police were unable to solve the case until 2016.

During Minery's sentencing in 2022, Preleski said Joanne Sweetman and Hannon conspired to kill her husband to gain access to the cult’s vast financial empire made off the backs of followers.

“Mr. Minery was caught up in the struggle for control after Brother Julius died,” Preleski said in 2022. “It was control of the cult and control of the business interests that were worth a lot of money.”

But Minery wasn’t the organizer of the homicide, Preleski said at the time. “Minery was a follower, Hannon was a leader,” he had said.

Minery received a nine-year sentence after reaching a deal for his cooperation in the case. Up to the point of the homicide, Minery had no criminal arrest record and had lived a normal life, Preleski added.

Hannon maintained his innocence to the end, his attorney J. Patten Brown III said after his client died in January 2022.

About a month after the 2004 killing, New Britain police investigated the discovery of a human leg found in the area of Shuttle Meadow Golf Club in August, an arrest warrant said. The state medical examiner determined the leg had been severed with a sharp object, likely during a homicide, police said. But the case remained open for years and investigators were unable to identify whose leg had been found.

Although Hannon told federal investigators about his role in the homicide in 2006, the information was never shared with New Britain police, according to the warrant. A decade later, a lieutenant who had been part of a successful team of detectives who solved homicides of unidentified people found in New Britain was checking NAMUS, a national database for missing persons, when she discovered that Sweetman had disappeared around the same time the leg had been found, an arrest warrant said.

DNA provided by Sweetman’s son confirmed the leg belonged to Sweetman, the warrant said. New Britain police interviewed Hannon and Minery in 2016 and 2017, and they provided conflicting stories and blamed each other for the crime, the warrant stated.

Both men said after Sweetman was beaten and incapacitated, they stuffed his body into a freezer, the warrant said. Minery later used a saw to cut off Sweetman’s arms, legs and head, and buried the remains in at least two locations, the warrant stated. Sweetman may have been alive when he was placed in the freezer, Minery told police, according to the warrant.

Detectives found Sweetman’s torso buried under a garage in New Britain that at one time belonged to Minery, after reviewing Federal Bureau of Investigation documents in 2016, the warrant said.

Hannon had pleaded not guilty to the charges and was being held in lieu of $2 million bail in the pretrial phase of court proceedings when he died.