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the true crime that's worth your time
Another chapter in The Work’s bizarre story has closed. If you’re not a cult expert or a Connecticut resident, you might now know what I’m talking about: The real estate empire/alleged sex abuse ring/alleged financial scam/doomsday cult was founded in the 1960s, and crumbled about a decade ago, following a gruesome homicide case. But other than a podcast episode here or there and a 2019 episode of ID series People Magazine Investigates: Cults, it’s not a story that’s been widely told. So, here’s some backstory:
Julius Schacknow, who went by “Brother Julius,” founded The Work, attracting “several hundred idealistic young people,” his 1996 obituary in the Hartford Courant reads. “He was mesmerizing,” one member of the group told PMI:C. “Brother Julius would lay his hands on people, and they would shake and vibrate ... and lay on the ground.”
The group would build a multimillion-dollar real estate business that included management of multiple Century 21 realty businesses. Behind the scenes, however, there were (the inevitable?) allegations of sexual coercion and abuse. “At least two women, including a stepdaughter, accused Mr. Schacknow in separate lawsuits in 1986 and 1988 of having sexually abused them when they were children,” his obit reads.
Per People, this might have been part of his overall rap, as “Schacknow was telling his followers he was Jesus Christ reincarnate, and that God had commanded him to judge the world’s sinners. He also told them he had the power to heal people of their addictions and illnesses, and that salvation was only attainable through sexual intercourse with him.”
A Buffalo News report from 1993 has more details:
In civil suits filed in the 1980s and settled out of court, Karen Schacknow, Schacknow's stepdaughter, and Beverly Sweetman sued him for sexual abuse. Daniel Sweetman, Schacknow's son, was sent to prison for sexually molesting two young boys. And to the dismay of many in his flock, according to former members, Brother Julius announced he intended to practice polygamy -- although the marriages were not made official outside the cult.
Some members also charged that they were being exploited financially, paid sub-minimum wages and forced to engage in fraudulent labor practices. Pat Goski said she worked six 12-hour days each week and never was paid more than $60. She also said many laborers were officially "laid off" but still were expected to work full time at cult businesses. They were paid the difference between unemployment benefits and their normal wage.
A former member who identified himself as "Clearness" was one of several who sued Brother Julius' enterprises for back wages and damages; he settled out of court for $25,000.
"It's one of the most abusive cults I've seen," said Lorna Goldberg, a social worker running a support group for former members of several cults, who has counseled about a half dozen ex-followers of Brother Julius.
So, lots to work with there, and we haven’t even gotten to the murder.
Schacknow died in 1996, and Joanne Sweetman (the mother of Daniel Sweetman, and one of Schacknow’s “wives”) and her “husband” Paul (quote marks around spousal designations as these were not legal marriages, just bonds formed within The Work) took control of the cult — or at least, they tried to.
But Paul disappeared in 2004, his fate unknown until 2016, when “police were able to link a human leg found 12 years earlier at Shuttle Meadow Country Course to the Sweetman missing persons case,” the Courant reported in 2019.
Bu 2016, Joanne Sweetman (who, per the Bristol Press, “would instruct female members on how to sexually please their husbands”) had been dead for five years. But according to Sorek Minery and Rudy Hannon, the men arrested in Paul’s slaying, Joanne was the one who ordered Paul’s death.
“Mrs. Sweetman enlisted co-defendant Rudy Hannon, who is the biological son of Brother Julius, to eliminate Paul Sweetman,” New Britain State’s Attorney Brian W. Preleski told the court. "That was in large part motivated by profit.” One or both of the men (their statements to police contradict each other) killed Paul at a construction company, then cut his body into pieces and buried it. From the Courant’s excellent report:
Joanne Sweetman reported her husband missing on July 24, 2004 and told police she’d last seen him on July 21. She explained her husband’s disappearance, according to a former cult member, by saying he had received a vision from Brother Julius to travel the world and to proselytize.
Sweetman’s killing might never have been discovered, but for a coyote that dug up one of his legs and dragged it onto Shuttle Meadow Country Club, where it was found Aug. 27, 2004.
Minery, who was 43 at the time, took a deal offered by prosecutors and provided evidence against Hannon (age 74). That was 2019 — and as of this month, Hannon was still in jail on $2 million bond, awaiting trial. By then he was 77, and “His case had been essentially stalled by the pandemic and no trial date had been set,” the Register Citizen reports. “During a routine court date next month, the case would have likely been continued again.”
And now for the news hook that got me started on this whole item: Hannon contracted COVID-19 in recent months, and died of complications from the virus on Jan. 15, the 27th Connecticut inmate to die in the pandemic. “He was going to trial,” his defense attorney said. “The tragic thing is that because of COVID, he sat there for years.”
Hannon’s death means Minery will now learn his fate, as according to the Press, his arrangement with prosecutors was an “open plea,” which means he wouldn’t have been sentenced until Hammond’s case concluded. Last August, his case was given a continuance to April 5, 2022.
While trying to figure out if Minery was out on bond, I found his woodworking business, which appears to have stalled out around the time of his arrest. Here’s its Instagram and YouTube channel, which prominently features Minery. He’s an engaging and likable figure on camera, and I’m curious to see how prosecutors and the overseeing judge move forward on his case.
All this to say, this seems like a story more worthy of a smart and thorough adaptation than yet another look at a played-out case like the Zodiac or whatever. It ticks all the big true-crime story boxes, and at its center remains Minery, a relative enigma with what I suspect is a remarkable story to tell. Someone good needs to get on this one, stat. — EB
Speaking of played-out true crime, don’t believe the headlines that claim the Sharon Tate house is for sale. Even TMZ admits that the vast mansion built on the site of the infamous Manson Family mass murder isn’t the house where the crime went down, so Zack Bagans can stand down.
The last resident of 10050 Cielo Drive was Trent Reznor, as Curbed LA wrote in a comprehensive history back in 2019. He was renting the home for 11K a month, and recorded The Downward Spiral there, then moved out. (A few years later, he told Rolling Stone that he knew the house was set to be demolished, so he swiped the front door and installed it in his home in New Orleans. Whatever.
Real estate investor Alvin Weintraub bought the house from its previous owner, Rudolph Altobelli, an agent who had owned the house since 1963. (Tate and Polanski, like Reznor, were only renting.) Weintraub redeveloped the site, knocking down the classic Robert Byrd building and replacing it with a fairly ugly, 18,000 square foot Mediterranean mansion in 1996. And it sat on the market and sat some more.
That’s the structure Full House creator Jeff Franklin bought in 1999, then did a massive demo and rebuild chronicled in Architectural Digest in 2010. And that’s the building that just went on the market, as reported by TMZ and others, for a cool $85 million. Is the house the “Site Of Sharon Tate Murders,” as the tabloid website claims? Not really!
Anyway, the listing video is there at the top of this item, and here’s the listing, as repped by Million Dollar Listing: LA’s Josh and Matt Altman. It’s a fine house, if you’re into that kind of thing, but I’m not going to count it as true-crime real estate. — EB
But while we’re on Manson, what are we supposed to do with these Secrets of Playboy Manson/cult claims? This is some A&E show I’m not going to watch because I don’t care, but if you do I guess it kicked off last night. In the run-up, Yahoo Entertainment published this piece headlined “Was the Playboy Mansion 'cult-like'? Hugh Hefner had 'profound' fascination with Charles Manson,” and quotes director Alexandra Dean thusly:
At first I didn't know about the cult word, you know, I was a little skeptical. But I kept hearing it from different women over the decades so I knew I had to take it seriously. And then I put something in Episode 2 to kind of explain to you why I did take it so seriously and include it and that's the fascination Hef had with Charles Manson ... it was very profound and multiple people told me about it.
…
Other people told me about Hef studying [Manson] home videos and having them in his personal library. It was like, OK, Hef is intentionally cribbing off of this guy — and he's obviously not a coldblooded murderer. What he's cribbing off of is this control of the women. That's what we try to show is that there's this thing that Hef does, which is very controlling that he seems to have honed over the decades.
For her part, Gail Bugliosi, the widow of Helter Skelter author Vincent Bugliosi, disputes the claims, saying, “Hef couldn't have been a better friend to all of the people he invited to his home.” If you do happen to watch the show and can catch us up on how credible you found the claims, please do drop us a line at editorial@bestevidence.fyi. — EB
Hey, do you remember when EVERYBODY was into kundalini yoga? Did you know that it was “almost entirely made up by one guy sometime in the late 1960s,” and that guy was a customs agent/ICE contractor “accused of rape, sexual misconduct, and financial malfeasance”?
That’s not even the best part of Vanity Fair’s “The Second Coming of Guru Jagat,” a takedown of the once-trendy practice-slash-cult, which around 8-9 years ago was the darling of all the cool meditation kids, who would pack into places like ABC Carpet and Home (an allegedly mission-based Manhattan business that is home to all sorts of new cool and woo events) to hear how this discipline would save them. (The video above tells the tale quite well.)
(Right around this time, I had a contract job ghost-writing/heavily editing books for a self-help publishing house, and it was all anyone ever talked about. Hey, the checks cleared! But I know firsthand that people thought this was basically the best thing since sliced vegan gluten-free avocado toast, these are non-fat avocados, right?)
Kundalini hit the hype cycle through the Ra Ma Institute, run by a woman everyone called Guru Jagat. But as reporter Hayley Phelan reports, Jagat’s birth name was Katie Griggs, and she was a caucasian-identifying woman who, especially after the Jan 6. insurrection, embraced QAnon conspiracy theories and claimed the pandemic was a myth. And then she died — not of COVID, as some speculated, but of “a pulmonary embolism following ankle surgery.”
And even that isn’t the end of the story for this group, it seems. You should read the full story, which is a wild and fascinating ride. — EB
Can I count WeWork as a cult? I had sort of shied away from that designation — after all, if we start to cover every bullshit startup with a charismatic founder who prompts a disturbingly loyal following, we’ll become yet another tech news Substack and who wants that.
But WeCrashed, the Apple series based on the coworking company, seems to be leaning in to the cult angle, and hard. They dropped this teaser late last week, with Jared “I didn’t meet a bad accent I didn’t adore”* Leto as WeWork’s Israeli founder, Adam Neumann, and Anne Hathaway as Rebekah, WeWork’s chief brand and impact officer and Adam’s wife.
I watched and enjoyed Hulu doc WeWork: Or The Making And Breaking Of A $47 Billion Unicorn, and liked it as a silly startup tale. I haven’t read The Cult Of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, And The Great Startup Delusion (I’m still on my library’s reserve list). Does this dumb real estate semi-fail (I mean, there are still WeWorks; my company has space in two!) merit yet another adaptation? I don’t know, and guess we’ll find out together. The series will drop its first three episodes on March 3, the other five eps will drop weekly after that. — EB
*To quote my esteemed colleague’s review of House of Gucci, “Leto in particular is doing some left-field Cheffrey Tamboyardee thing that may not ‘work’ but is nonetheless riveting.” A prescient observation given his next project!
Wednesday on Best Evidence: True crime that burned brightly, then flickered out.
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