A True Crime TV Appearance

 

By Claire Booth 

Almost exactly a year ago, I taped an episode of City Confidential, the A&E show that spends an entire episode on one crime and the ripple effects it has on a community.

They asked me for an interview because I wrote a book about the case they decided to feature. The False Prophet: Conspiracy, Extortion and Murder in the Name of God covers the five murders committed by a Bay Area man who claimed to be a prophet of God. I covered the story as a newspaper reporter, and it was so convoluted and complicated, I always knew it would take a book to explain it all properly.

Because it’s such a bizarre case, multiple TV shows have featured it, and me, over the years. City Confidential was definitely one of the most professional productions I’ve participated in. It was a pleasure to work with their producers and crew.

I’ve had to keep my involvement under wraps until the air date was announced. I just found out this week that the episode, “Marin County Murders,” airs at 10 p.m. Eastern/7 p.m. Pacific, this Thursday, April 6. I haven’t seen any footage, so I’ll be seeing it for the first time, too. And if that sparks your interest in the case, you can buy The False Prophet here for a special sale price this whole next week.

 

 

A Tenth Anniversary

By Claire Booth

My first book came out 10 years ago this week. It was crime, but it wasn’t fiction. The False Prophet: Conspiracy, Extortion and Murder in the name of God recounted the true story of a California man who claimed to be the one chosen to usher in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. And he decided that he needed to finance his apocalyptic cult through any means – including drugs, prostitution, and fraud. None of those crimes made him enough income, however. So he turned to murder.

When Taylor Helzer was done, he had killed five people and irreparably harmed the lives of many more.

I covered this case as a newspaper reporter, starting the very day bodies began to surface in the Sacramento region of the Bay Area. That was in 2000. The court case didn’t finish until 2004. It wasn’t until that was complete that law enforcement officials could speak freely to me about their roles in the case. That also became when I could get access to things like trial exhibits and court transcripts. Then I put together a nonfiction book proposal, which had to include a detailed chapter-by-chapter outline.

As I was creating the book proposal – which ultimately ran to 53 pages – I knew that I wanted the book to read like a novel. I wanted my readers to become completely immersed in the story and not be pulled out of it with phrases like “the witness later recalled that he saw…” To me, that sort of thing was jarring. So I structured my narrative to read like a crime novel. BUT everything in it – every single detail – was true. What makes me smile now is that I didn’t realize at the time I also was laying the groundwork for my career as a novelist.

Here’s the overview of the case I wrote to lead off my book proposal:

***

Taylor Helzer is a handsome devil.

Imagine his trusting brokerage clients, a retired couple who want his steady hand to make sure their savings can support their beloved RV vacations. Imagine an innocent girl meeting this gorgeous man at a rave, his flirting and his smile making her knees weak when she is with him. And imagine a daughter happy and in love as she talks about her new boyfriend, a man she doesn't know has secret plans for more than just romance.

Taylor Helzer is much more than an ordinary lothario or con artist. As the millennial year 2000 begins, he proclaims himself the prophet of God who will usher in the coming reign of Christ.

And he has a plan.

He says he wants to spread peace and love throughout the world by starting what he calls a self-awareness program, but his real intention is to brainwash participants and create his own personal cult.

Like any other American dream, this one needs funding, $20 million by his estimate. He will raise the money at any cost, because in direct contradiction with his program goal, Taylor does not believe in keeping the peace, or in right and wrong. Drugs, prostitution, extortion, murder -- anything goes.

He jettisons the Mormon faith in which he was raised but conveniently keeps many of its teachings, including belief in divine communication and the anointing of prophets. He brainwashes two fellow Mormons, including his brother, into helping him. And then he starts killing. The retired couple, the girlfriend, her mother and more die at Taylor's hands. Three of the bodies are dismembered, stuffed into gym bags and sunk in the Sacramento Delta. The killings quickly become infamous -- the duffel-bag murders. Only through crack police work and his own drug-addled attempts at money laundering are Taylor and his two disciples caught.

The False Prophet: Conspiracy, Extortion and Murder in the Name of God will be the first authoritative book chronicling Taylor Helzer's journey from good Mormon boy to condemned mass murderer. Based on more than four years of reporting and research, the book will be written by the only journalist to cover the case from the commission of the crimes to the imposition of the sentences. The book will be 324 pages long, excluding 16 pages of photographs, four pages of acknowledgements and 12 pages of endnotes.

The author is the only person to have the endorsement of the families and friends of all the victims and the cooperation of law enforcement officials, as well as exclusive access to never-before-released grand jury testimony in the case.

Instead of merely recounting Taylor Helzer's criminal activities, the book will place his disturbing plans in a broader context by paying close attention to how his religious upbringing helps fuel his messianic ambitions. It also will make clear through the recollections of many of Taylor's friends and his accomplices that had he not been caught, he could have become a cult leader of unparalleled power and reach, with no morality binding him to the laws of man or God.

The False Prophet will include details too compelling, and simply too bizarre, to imagine:

- Taylor, who served a Mormon mission in Brazil in his late teens, wants to train Brazilian orphans as assassins and then use them to kill the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The leaderless church will then have to make him its prophet.

- Taylor's ex-girlfriend, who is initially involved in his plans, leaves him to become a model in Hollywood. The Playboy magazine issue featuring her as the centerfold hits newsstands the same week the duffel bags are discovered in the Sacramento Delta.

- A friend and theological sounding board of Taylor's who helps him cover his tracks is both a self-described witch and a practicing Mormon, beliefs she does not find at all incongruous.

- One of Taylor's money-making schemes involves running a prostitution ring catering to wealthy businessmen. Potential working girls he meets at raves are given questionnaires that include such questions as "Is murder ever wrong?"

- The three accomplices – Taylor, his brother Justin, and their friend Dawn Godman – leave voluminous evidence, including several "to do" lists that include tasks like "ashes, vacuum, (and) tooth brush bathroom," which are easily found by police. 

The False Prophet will be structured chronologically with the exception of the first three chapters, which will introduce the victims and foreshadow their deaths. The book then will turn back to the childhoods of Taylor and his brother Justin Helzer and continue forward through the commission of the crimes, their arrests and subsequent convictions.

***

That was the beginning of my book proposal (and the beginning of my publishing career). The finished product hit stores on Feb. 5, 2008. It seems like just yesterday.

The Innocent

By Claire Booth

Last week, I talked about a murder case that I covered as a newspaper reporter (read that post here). A Bay Area man killed five people as part of a deluded scheme to acquire the money he said he needed in order to bring about Christ’s Second Coming. It’s those five people I want to talk about today.

Selina Bishop. In the summer of the year 2000, Selina was a 22-year-old living on her own for the first time in a little studio in the Marin County town of Woodacre, just north of San Francisco. She worked as a waitress at a local café, hung out with friends, dated a new guy, and generally enjoyed the unencumbered life of someone that age. She was quiet – people had to strain to hear her voice when she talked. But leaning in to listen was worth it. She had a great sense of humor and a playful, bubbly nature that would light up a room. She also had a passionate loyalty to those she loved, especially her best friend – her mother. 

Selina Bishop in 1999.

Jenny and Selina in the late 1970s.

Jenny Villarin. Selina’s mother raised her only child alone. In a sometimes bumpy life, the two of them were the only constant. And they adored each other. Jenny had moved up to Marin County when she was with Selina’s father. She stayed after the relationship ended in the early 1980s, but kept in close contact with her sprawling family. She was the sister who made sure to call on birthdays, who always sent cards, who brought a smile to everyone’s face. In the summer of 2000, the 45-year-old was tending bar at the Paper Mill Saloon in the Marin County hamlet of Forest Knolls. One night in early August, a dear friend stopped by the bar to see her.

Jenny Villarin

Jim Gamble. A big bear of a man with a kind smile, the 54-year-old Jim had known Jenny for decades. He’d even journeyed back to Pennsylvania at one point to help her move back to California after her relationship with a man there failed. He was semi-retired by then after years in the computer industry. He now dabbled in mining, owning claims in Nevada and Oregon with his brother. He traveled a lot to see friends and family, including his two sons. When his mother divorced a husband who had never liked him, Jim showed up on her doorstep with a bottle of champagne. “Now I can visit my mother whenever I want to.” Eventually, he moved in with her to help out, and because he enjoyed her. They loved to take cruises together, where Jim loved spinning ladies around the dance floor and learned to scuba dive during off-shore excursions. The pair had another cruise planned for that fall. 

Jim Gamble.

Annette and Ivan Stineman. Annette Callender met Ivan Stineman in 1945, when she was a USO hostess and he was a U.S. Coast Guard quartermaster second-class. They were married three months later and settled in Southern California. They had two daughters they adored and the home was always a happy one. Ivan always kept everyone smiling with silly jokes and his penchant for bringing home all manner of finds from garage sales. Annette kept everything running smoothly, but never could resist taking in animals. Throughout the years, the family had dogs, cats, turtles, guinea pigs, a chipmunk, and even a spider monkey. They both worked for Standard Oil and when the company consolidated operations in the Bay Area in the early 1970s, they decided to take the transfer. They moved to Concord, a quiet suburb in the East Bay. Ivan took an early retirement a few years later and became a real estate agent. Annette stayed with the company until the mid-1980s before she retired as well. And that was when they really started to have fun. They took cruises all over the world, had time-shares in several different places and a motor home to get them anywhere else they felt like traveling. Ivan was diagnosed with diabetes in 1990, and Annette started caring for his health just as she had everything else so efficiently for so many years. She was in fine health and after he had a gimpy knee replaced in 1998, he felt better than he had in years. There was more of the world to see, and they were ready to do it.

Annette and Ivan Stineman in 1945.

The Stinemans on a trip to Hawaii in 1997.

On July 30, 2000, Annette and Ivan Stineman answered the door to find their former stock broker standing on their porch. Friendly and gracious as always, they invited him and his brother inside. They were then held at gunpoint, kidnapped from their own home, and forced to write checks from their retirement accounts. They were then drugged and killed. The checks turned out to be uncashable.

On August 3, 2000, Selina Bishop was invited to her boyfriend’s home in Concord. He had started dating her a few months earlier with the sole intention of using her to unwittingly launder the money he planned to steal from the Stinemans. She knew nothing about his true aims and happily agreed to visit his home, which he’d never before invited her to visit. Once she was there, the two brothers – panicking because the funds weren’t accessible – killed her to cover their tracks.

Before dawn the next day, Selina’s “boyfriend” decided he had one more loose end to tie up. He’d avoided all of Selina’s friends while they were dating, but had accidently met her mother. He knew she was staying at Selina’s little studio. He got the gun, drove across a bridge from the East Bay to Marin County, burst into the apartment and shot Jenny and Jim to death.

All five people continue to be missed and mourned by those whose lives they touched. 

A Marin County memorial, including the carved bear, to Selina, Jenny, Jim, Annette and Ivan.