Word: cults
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...abductors were members of a freaky religious cult, and included its leader, Lindberg Sanders, 49, an unemployed construction worker. Besides refusing to eat pork or drink water, they believed police to be agents of the devil. After 30 hours of futile negotiations, the authorities surrounding the house became convinced that Officer Hester had been murdered. Six members of TACT (for Tactical Apprehension Containment Team), stormed the dwelling, and in the ensuing struggle all seven cultists were killed. Hester was found inside, badly battered and dead for several hours...
...part of the mysterious portrait that onetime associates sketch of L. (for Lafayette) Ron Hubbard, 71, founder and guiding inspiration of the Church of Scientology. As proclaimed by Hubbard, Scientology is a religion that sees life as a relentless struggle to erase painful mental images (called "engrams" in the cult's jargon) that block a person from achieving his full potential and that may accumulate through his successive incarnations. Hubbard has insisted that he lived through a series of incarnations and that he was in fact 74 trillion years...
...Hubbard's absence, Scientology is deeply riven by bitter disputes. A dozen or so of Hubbard's youngest followers, who have spent much of their lives in the cult's bizarre world, have seized control of the organization. Claiming to be "on Source" with Hubbard, and to be acting under his direction, they are also trying to gain control of the church's assets, estimated to be more than $280 million. About 75 senior leaders have been purged by the young zealots in a coup that has shaken the 29-year-old church...
...another California court, Scientology is seeking to recover three cartons containing about 5,000 Scientology documents. The papers were placed under court protection by Gerry Armstrong, 36, who was authorized in January 1980 by Hubbard to gather papers for a laudatory biography. Armstrong found documents so damaging to the cult's credibility that he quit the church in disgust. He vows to use the papers to prove his charges, made in a sworn statement for a court case in Florida, that "Mr. Hubbard had continually misrepresented himself and had lied about his past...
...first, police reinforcements thought they could talk Hester's captors out. The officers barricaded the area, surrounded the cult headquarters and evacuated nearby buildings. Police established contact with Sanders over Hester's police radio. Nearly incoherent, Sanders repeatedly threatened to "blow [Hester's] head off." By midnight the batteries in the police radio had run down, and contact was maintained through a bullhorn and occasionally the telephone...