More on Terri Hoffman-Conscious Development
08 Jul 2001
December 27, 1993 / January 3, 1994
SECTION: EXHIBIT A; Coincidence, Or . . .; Pg. 8
HEADLINE: Spiritualist Is Accused of Mind Control
BYLINE: BY GARY TAYLOR, Special to The National Law Journal
BODY:
ON THE SURFACE, the criminal fraud trial might have resembled any
routine bankruptcy-related proceeding. Most of the testimony came
from accountants; the evidence centered on financial transactions.
Bubbling beneath the surface in that federal case in Dallas,
however, was a background that is anything but routine. In fact,
"bizarre" has been the word most often invoked to describe the story
that has placed Dallas spiritual adviser Terri Hoffman at the center
of so much litigation involving allegations that she has committed
murder through mind control. U.S. v. Hoffman, 3-93-CR216-D.
Her Nov. 23 conviction on 10 counts of bankruptcy fraud marks just
the latest chapter in a lengthy saga. Allegations in pending civil
suits accuse Ms. Hoffman of causing and profiting from the deaths of
10 associates and relatives who committed suicide or suffered untimely
deaths while under her influence.
With state investigators unable to bring any credible criminal
charges stemming directly from the deaths, the federal bankruptcy
fraud case has been compared by some sources to an "Al Capone
strategy." They suggest that federal authorities employed the
bankruptcy fraud prosecution as a way of getting a conviction of some
kind against her, just as the government in the 1930s used income tax
evasion charges to put the notorious Chicago crime lord behind bars.
Still, the fraud case itself is "significant," says Molly W.
Bartholow, the chapter 13 bankruptcy trustee in Dallas. Ms. Bartholow
says the case may lead to other, similar, prosecutions.
Ms. Hoffman's lawyers have been unavailable for comment.
Previously, they have described her as a woman being persecuted for
religious beliefs and linked unfairly to an almost unbelievable chain
of coincidence.
For the past five years, the Hoffman saga has perplexed prosecutors
and litigators alike as they have sought to explain the unusual string
of deaths that seems to surround her. Lawsuits depict her as the
leader of a cult. They accuse her of using hypnosis and mind control
to seize the assets of followers and then somehow cause them to suffer
fatal accidents or commit suicide. Ms. Hoffman's attorneys have
called the allegations absurd and say they amount to character
assassination.
"These people -- her followers -- were all well-educated," says
Cecil Emerson, chief felony prosecutor for the Dallas County district
attorney's office. "We had a number of offenses we tried to assemble,
but bankruptcy fraud is all that's happened so far, and that's not
even connected to anything except the property she got."
The prominence of some of the alleged victims has enhanced the
notoriety of the Hoffman litigation. Examples include:
* David Goodman -- a former professor at Southern Methodist
University -- and his wife, who were discovered shot to death in 1989
in what's officially been dubbed a double suicide. They allegedly
were introduced and married by Ms. Hoffman, who also had collected a
total of $110,000 from them in the years before their deaths,
according to check registers found in their home.
* Glenn Cooley -- one of Ms. Hoffman's former husbands -- who died
of a drug overdose in 1977, three months after their divorce and just
one month after he allegedly had executed a will surrendering all
property to her.
* Kenneth Wilder -- Ms. Hoffman's son -- who was killed in a 1979
construction accident.
* Sandy Cleaver and her maid, who died in a 1981 auto accident
after preparing new wills and leaving their estate to Ms. Hoffman,
along with a $300,000 insurance policy made out to her.
* Robin Lynn Huntoon Otstott, who shot herself in 1987 after
drafting a will that left jewelry, land and other possessions to Ms.
Hoffman.
* Don Hoffman, Ms. Hoffman's husband, who died of a drug overdose
in 1988 after explaining in a video recording that he believed he had
inoperable cancer.
Reporters for the Dallas Morning News have traced Ms. Hoffman's
career as a spiritual adviser back to the early 1970s, when she began
collecting followers while teaching a weekly, non-accredited
meditation class at SMU. As Terri Cooley, she founded a company in
1974 called Conscious Development of Body, Mind and Soul Inc. Instead
of paying fees for the courses, students made "love offerings" and
allegedly were encouraged to surrender certain items of jewelry
believed to have "negative energies."
According to biographies distributed by her company, Ms. Hoffman
was born in 1938 in Fort Stockton, Texas, and adopted by a Dallas
family after having bee orphaned. She has described herself as a
financial adviser, but it's clear her consulting covered a wide range
of matters. Her biography describes her belief that her real family
consists of invisible beings she calls "masters," who visited her as
an infant.
The publicity surrounding the death of the Goodmans first
catapulted Ms. Hoffman into the spotlight. A former business and
computer professor educated at Berkeley and Yale, Mr. Goodman had left
academia in 1987 to launch an investment counseling business and write
newsletters. The deaths are the basis for one of the civil suits
against Ms. Hoffman by their heirs. Goodman v. Hoffman, 91-12630
(Dist. Ct., Dallas Co.).
Just after the Goodman deaths in 1989, the Dallas County district
attorney's office launched a wide-ranging investigation into Ms.
Hoffman's activities, focusing on the deaths and seeking any
information that might directly link her to murders. But Mr. Emerson
says he could come up with nothing more sinister than allegations of
mind control.
"It just doesn't translate into a grand jury proceeding," he says.
"It's been an interesting endeavor, but I just never could quite get
there."
Mr. Emerson says his interviews with surviving followers left him
convinced that she has hypnotic powers. But, he adds, "These folks
were emotional problems before they found her, and they became easy
victims for her."
When FBI agents started poking around in Ms. Hoffman's bankruptcy
case, Mr. Emerson says, he shared his files with them. But the
assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the bankruptcy fraud case says
he decided to keep his focus clearly on the financial problems and
avoid any confusion from introduction of unrelated allegations.
"We did not want to go into the hocus-pocus," says Larry E.
Jarrett, emphasizing his office's new vigor in pursuing bankruptcy
fraud investigations. "We won't tolerate deceptions by debtors any
longer in the Northern District of Texas."
Ms. Hoffman filed for bankruptcy protection in October 1991,
contending that her financial and psychic counseling businesses had
suffered from the publicity about the deaths. Meanwhile, her accusers
have attached the bankruptcy as a strategy for derailing the civil
suits. Their complaints and the observations of Ms. Bartholow
inspired the investigations that prompted the fraud case.
Officially, the 12-count indictment alleges that Ms. Hoffman hid a
variety of assets, debts, payments and contracts. More specifically,
the government accused her of failing to report four credit card
accounts that she kept open and one card on which she made payments.
It also charged that she failed to report a $100,000 prepaid contract
for attorneys' services with her civil lawyer -- a document considered
an asset by the government. In addition, the government charged that
she had failed to disclose existence of a contract for book or movie
rights on her life story, failed to list property she held for a
Chicago associate and tried to conceal her ownership of 13 valuable
Audubon prints.
In opening statements to the jury, Ms. Hoffman's attorney, Dallas
sole practitioner Shirley Baccus-Lobel, blamed her client's troubles
on honest mistakes. "This is not a highly educated woman, and she is
not a woman with a remarkable IQ."
As the trustee who pushed for the charges, Ms. Bartholow served as
the key witness for the prosecution. She testified first about
numerous revisions by Ms. Hoffman to her financial disclosures during
creditor hearings on the 1991 bankruptcy and said that creditor
meetings repeatedly turned up inconsistencies. Ms. Bartholow also
provided another crucial piece of evidence, in the form of a videotape
she made of the inside of Ms. Hoffman's home in North Dallas. Because
Ms. Hoffman did not testify on her own behalf, the tape stood as the
jury's only exposure to her.
Defense witnesses included several of Ms. Hoffman's associates, who
testified that she suffered from mental stress and strain during the
time of preparation of her bankruptcy papers. But it wasn't enough to
overcome the conclusion voiced by Ms. Bartholow and argued by the
prosecution that Ms. Hoffman is a bad-faith debtor. Jurors convicted
her on 10 counts of fraud but acquitted her on two of the counts,
related to the contract for attorney services and the failure to
disclose sale of the Audubon paintings.
Besides facing prison for the fraud convictions, Ms. Hoffman also
faces the equivalent of an economic death penalty through the Chapter
7 conversion. Trustees now are authorized to seize all of her
property, with the exception of a few exempted items, and sell them to
placate creditors.
Although her opponents and accusers feel satisfied with Ms.
Hoffman's fraud conviction, they say their quest is not yet complete.
"The bankruptcy case kept us from going forward with our case,"
says Jim P. Barklow, a Dallas sole practitioner who represents her
stepchildren in a state suit in Dallas accusing her of using mind
control to profit from the deaths of their father and others. "We'll
have to wait and see now what happens with the Chapter 7." Hoffman v.
Hoffman, 89-2649-D.
Ms. Hoffman is scheduled for sentencing Jan. 14 on the fraud case.
She faces the prospect of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on
each count.
Any text written by other authors which may be quoted in part or in full
within this coverage of this issue is provided according to U. S. Code
Title 17 "Fair Use" dictates which may be reviewed at
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html If you're an author
of an article and do not wish to allow it to be mirrored or otherwise
provided on The Skeptic Tank web site, let us know and it will be
removed fairly promptly.
Return to The Skeptic Tank's main Index page.
The views and opinions stated within this web page are those of the
author or authors which wrote them and may not reflect the views and
opinions of the ISP or account user which hosts the web page. The
opinions may or may not be those of the Chairman of The Skeptic Tank.