Case Profile: Children of Thunder

By Tara Dorfman

Nothing, perhaps, is a more overt display of narcissism than believing oneself to be a prophet of God; that's exactly what California Mormon Glenn Taylor Hezler called himself. When the self-professed prophet created a master plan in 2000 that he hoped would make him the new leader of the Mormon world, tragedy supervened. After the charming yet deranged Hezler manipulated his younger brother, Justin, and the credulous Dawn Godman to partake in a cult-like group called "The Children of Thunder," a bizarre and violent plan was put into motion-a plan that would leave five brutally murdered and tossed into the San Joaquin River. When violent workshops, drug abuse, mental illness and religious extremism combine, Hezler and his two disciples lose their moral compasses and commit the ultimate sin. In this case file it becomes hideously clear what can happen when people believe they have the right to kill in the name of God.

Stockbroker Turned Messiah

Raised by devout Catholics, Glenn Taylor and his brother Justin-one year his junior-lived relatively quiet lives in the San Francisco Bay area. Handsome, eloquent and charismatic, Glenn could be very convincing. A stockbroker, the 33-year-old was the more ambitious of the two brothers; Hezler was reported to have made Justin feel as though he would always be second best. But after Glenn returned from a Mormon mission in Brazil in the early 1990s holding new views that differed from the traditional Mormon doctrine, his behavior started to change. Suffering from bipolar disorder, Glenn began smoking and drinking, left his wife and child and was eventually hospitalized after a psychotic break in 1998. Both brothers were shamed when they were excommunicated from the Church that year due to drug abuse. Perhaps it was their severed relationship with the traditional Church that propelled them towards a life of violent extremism.

At a church social event in the summer of 1999, the brothers met Dawn Godman, a single mother with a speed habit, a failed marriage and a botched suicide attempt. According to Godman, she grew up unpopular in the Sierra foothills. After she married at 18 and had a son, in 1996 she started using methamphetamines and spent three days in a mental health ward after attempting suicide. After discovering the Mormon Church soon after, she said she felt a renewed sense of purpose. Unbeknownst to her, this newfound faith would soon lead her down a dark and violent path-one that would cause her to commit the most heinous of crimes.

Glenn encouraged Godman to attend "self-awareness classes," as he did with all the people he was close with. According to Helzer's attorney, these seminars, also called "Impact Trainings," are intense group experiences that tear down participants through humiliation and emotional pain in long sessions of degradation designed to awaken their "inner child." Once a participant reveals his or her deepest vulnerabilities, the group turns against them and heaves outrageous insults at them; the sessions are said to be so emotionally exhausting that participants often vomit. After finishing two of the program's three levels, during which Godman spent four days in a windowless room, Glenn Taylor took over instructing the remainder of the course. According to Godman's court testimony, on one occasion that Glenn "spoke for God," he silenced everyone as he ran into the rain, raised his hands to the sky and heard God tell him to kill the unfaithful. He then announced that if people weren't devoted to him, he'd be forced to eliminate them.

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