Wild Wild Country (2018) s01e04 Episode Script
Part 4
1
[helicopter whirring]
[Durow] I was hired by Wasco County
as the senior planner in July of 1981.
We had to make a number of trips
down to the ranch,
evaluate what was built
and then to start issuing citations.
None of those trips were very pleasant.
As we made the turn out of Antelope,
you always get a knot in your stomach.
And we were required to only go
with the sheriff's deputy.
We also wore
bulletproof vests under our clothing
because there were a lot of guns.
There were a lot of street people.
So, we were out there on an inspection.
We got trapped behind a truck
at an angle across the road.
We didn't think it was a setup.
[male reporter] You're getting in the way.
We're trying to take pictures
-and you're standing in the way is all.
-Sorry.
[male reporter]
They're blocking the road effectively?
They did an excellent job
of blocking the road.
Couldn't have it any done better.
[Durow]
And the moment Sheela showed up,
I said,
"You know, this is becoming a circus."
[male reporter]
Sheela, was this an accident?
I don't know. I just come here.
What do you want me to do?
I've just come. Let me see.
Do you want to move?
Let me see what it is.
[male reporter]
Is this is a joke? Are you joking?
No, I'm not joking, I'm serious.
This my few people's lives
is concerned here. This is no joke.
[Durow] So, we drove off the main road,
turned around
and immediately started coming out.
And there were
three single-wide structures.
And I wanted to go in,
so we got out of the car.
K.D. pulled in right ahead of us.
I said, "I'd like to go in this building."
And he said,
"Oh, it's just janitorial supplies.
You know, there's no need to"
He went up and said, "Oh, it's locked
and I don't have the key."
I can still pretty much hear those words.
And so we didn't really know
what we were going to do,
and it was getting darker.
So, we felt for our protection,
we're going back to The Dalles.
So, we all got in the car and left.
I thought about that often since.
Had I pressed the issue,
what would have happened that day?
Turns out that was their lab.
[female reporter]
Health officials are puzzled by this one.
They say they've never seen a case
where the symptoms
have developed so quickly.
They'll be working over the weekend
to try to pinpoint the cause.
In the meantime,
they're asking people who develop symptoms
to contact their county
health department immediately.
[female reporter]
Phones were ringing off the hook
at Wasco County Health Department
for two days.
The callers are sick. They're throwing up,
have headaches and diarrhea.
Everyone is frightened.
And I don't blame them. I'm frightened.
I wouldn't want to go out and eat either
if I thought there was something
going around out here
and not knowing what it is.
An investigator
from the State Health Division
arrived in The Dalles this afternoon
and one from the Center
for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia
is due in today or tomorrow,
all in an effort to try and find out what
is causing this mysterious food poisoning.
[male reporter] Meanwhile,
Oregon congressman Jim Weaver
is organizing two days of hearings
in Portland next week,
saying it's time government agencies
address the issue.
Strange things are happening. Just saying
"remain calm" doesn't do any good.
That's one of the reasons
I'm gonna hold a hearing.
I'm going to ask the federal agencies,
"What can you do?"
Mr. Speaker.
"Mr. Speaker, I have a strange
and terrifying tale to tell the House.
It is about a town that was poisoned."
Who would do such a terrifying thing?
Who would poison a whole town?
"Seven hundred were taken violently ill."
[Weaver]
Is there a madman lurking in The Dalles?
There must be such a person or persons
with a motive and innate ability
to assault this town
for it actually happened.
Ma Anand Sheela [chuckles]
was a piece of work, let me tell you.
[laughs]
[Marlon Williams'
"Strange Things" playing]
I hear strange things
Creeping in the night ♪
I have strange dreams ♪
In the bed where Lucy died ♪
Salmonella outbreak in The Dalles.
Salmonella can be very serious,
causing extreme dehydration.
That salmonella outbreak
[female reporter]
A mysterious outbreak left 750 people ill.
[male reporter] Food poisonings
of more than 750 people in The Dalles.
Well, certainly it was unprecedented,
uh in terms of the number of people
that were getting sick by the salmonella.
And the numbers just kept growing
and coming in and, um, it was chaotic.
When she expired ♪
They all went back to the city ♪
[Weaver] Someone is out there
who poisoned an entire town.
If they're capable of such a heinous act,
they're capable of anything.
Started getting sick to my stomach,
you know?
And I got chills and you get to shaking,
and you get so cold
that you just can't get warmed up.
My son-in-law was admitted
to the hospital this morning.
And my daughter is pretty sick
and she's also pregnant,
so we're quite concerned over that.
[Durow] Once people started getting sick
by the dozens and then hundreds,
we set up sort of a command area
in the health department
and we started tracking
what was going on.
[Durow] Where people had eaten,
what they had eaten.
And there didn't seem
to be any particular source
that all this information was pointing to.
It was sort of just scattered all over
and everyone,
including the Center for Disease Control,
couldn't make heads or tails
of what was going on.
Well, we didn't know, and we engaged
in good old ordinary investigation
to try to piece together
what the facts were.
[female reporter] So far,
three restaurants have been linked
to the outbreak:
Arlo's, The Portage Inn, and Shakey's.
But health officials say they don't know
if the contamination is from a patron
or from the food handlers
at the restaurant.
[male reporter] The preliminary conclusion
from state investigators in The Dalles
blames contamination of raw foods
by infected food handlers.
The health authorities blamed it
on food handlers.
It's clear that many restaurant employees
live in the same household.
So, we believe it's very plausible
that there was sort of
a chain of transmission.
[female reporter] They advised
the food workers be better trained.
And I said that's the silliest thing
I've ever heard.
Food handlers have nothing
to do with this.
This is one of the most greatest
terrorist acts in our country,
the poisoning of an entire town.
Different people in the office at the time
had different degrees of certainty about
the fact that there were
That the Rajneeshees were involved.
The Rajneesh Medical Corporation
has a well-equipped medical laboratory
at Rajneeshpuram.
I can only conclude and very positively
conclude that sabotage did take place.
[female reporter]
Today the Rajneeshees blasted Weaver.
[male reporter] A spokeswoman
for the Rajneesh Medical Corporation
called Weaver's speech outrageous
and purely malicious.
It's absolutely false.
It's an ugly, cowardly lie.
Jim Weaver from halfway across the country
attacked a religious minority
here in his own home state.
It's a despicable and outrageous thing,
and the Rajneesh Medical Corporation
is outraged.
I was also coordinating
the legal department,
and so I had certain responsibilities
that I need to ensure were taken care of.
I was sent by Sheela to support them.
I was filled with rage,
and I did a Sheela.
And we are going to infect.
We are going to infect
not only The Dalles,
not only Portland, not only Salem,
not only the whole state of Oregon,
and the whole country
of the United States of America.
Rajneeshees are going
to infect the whole world
with joy and with laughter
on epidemic proportions.
[Weaver]
All hell broke loose.
The whole state went bananas.
And they made me look like an idiot.
Main article written
in The Oregonian newspaper began,
"Weaver in another rambling,
incoherent speech."
My 18-year-old daughter
thought I was crazy,
because I was taking a lot of shit.
I have no direct concrete evidence
to implicate anyone.
I want to make that very clear.
No direct concrete evidence
to implicate anyone.
[female reporter]
But you have some of your own ideas?
I have my own views,
there is no question of that.
[Weaver] And Bill Bowerman came
into my office and said,
"Jim, do you know that these people
are murderers and cutthroats?"
And that was enough for me to say,
"Hey, wait a minute.
Nobody else is doing anything about it,
so I'm going to."
And I began investigating.
[Jane]
Sheela was in a really difficult position.
Because the Share-A-Home project
was failing,
we had Sheela on somewhat shaky ground.
So, when Bhagwan told Sheela
she needed to be sure
that Rajneeshees were elected
to the county commission,
it was for her so important
because this may mean the difference
between her remaining
his secretary or not.
By this time, a small group of people,
rich people in their own right,
had come to Rajneeshpuram.
They were known as the Hollywood crowd.
This was something very radical.
Her position as his secretary was
in jeopardy.
[female reporter] When we learned
that upscale, well-educated professionals
in Los Angeles
were following an Indian guru
and giving their money
to support meditation centers
here in Southern California,
we wanted to know more.
[Niren]
And there was a new group.
They called them the Hollywood crowd.
Hasya was the center of this group.
I've always wanted nothing but the best.
I would call myself
a connoisseur of the best.
She had been married to Al Ruddy,
the producer of The Godfather.
-[Clint Eastwood] And the winner
-[applause]
And the winner is [clears throat]
Albert S. Ruddy, The Godfather.
[Niren]
Hasya was soft-spoken,
made a lot of money.
And they had this big house.
Big white Mediterranean kind of structure.
Big swimming pool.
I actually was in that house
a number of times.
It was a lot of fun.
They start throwing parties
back in Hollywood
to raise money for Bhagwan.
[female reporter] John bought this mansion
in West Hollywood for the Bhagwan,
the perfect place
for their Sannyasin friends
to meditate and collect money.
[John]
We're looking for a way to express
his essence in Los Angeles
in a way that people could come into it
and just go, "Wow."
[female reporter]
It's used as a sort of recruiting center.
Wealthy people are invited to parties
and introduced to the joys
of surrendering to the master.
The Hollywood people,
they start feeding Bhagwan
with brochures of fantastic jewelry.
Things that Sheela
would never have shown him
because she knew he would want them.
He was like this This kind of bird,
this blackbird that collects shiny things.
The Hollywood people
bought him a diamond watch.
It cost a million dollars.
[John] He likes the fine things,
like all of us do.
And more than that, his disciples want
to give him the best of everything.
How much money, John,
do you think you've given Bhagwan?
Few hundred thousand.
-Hasya?
-Also a few hundred thousand.
[Jane] By this time, the Hollywood people
had direct access to Bhagwan.
Access to Bhagwan was everything.
[cameras clicking]
[Jane] He would invite them to come
and spend time with him
without Sheela to accompany them.
[Niren]
When you start having Hasya,
a rich woman from California
who had fairly recently come to the ranch,
Sheela felt threatened.
She suspected that there were other people
now who were having his ear.
[Jane] Bhagwan even went so far
as to call Sheela into his house
and to explain to her
another corporation was to be set up,
and Hasya and John
would run this corporation.
That made Sheela really, really angry.
[Sheela]
I remember my father
he would always say,
"You and Bhagwan are meant to be together.
You are a team that is unbreakable."
When Bhagwan is behind me,
I always felt I could do anything.
I had this power of trust and love.
Protecting Bhagwan's vision,
protecting Bhagwan's people
was highest in my existence.
I took his people as my people.
I was with Bhagwan
because I fell in love with him.
And we went through a big journey.
But, unfortunately
Bhagwan got sidetracked.
Some of his talks were not so coherent.
You see this behavior changes.
Bhagwan started going down the hill.
Bhagwan had started speaking to Sheela
about a doomsday scenario.
The world would be in chaos
and fall apart.
His Sannyasins would be safe.
There would
be underground dwellings built.
They would be able to emerge
as the new man and live his vision.
So, I see this irrational behavior.
He has to go. Press must go.
[Sheela] One day our pharmacist
comes totally upset to me.
Brought with him the prescription
that was written by Bhagwan's doctor
to get drugs for Bhagwan.
I was horrified.
This rich group of people have
gotten Bhagwan hooked onto the drugs,
combination of laughing gas, valium.
[chuckling]
To wait till the evening,
I go speak with Bhagwan.
It was a long day for me
because I was so upset.
I gave every argument
that I could think of.
The drugs would be attracting
every legal entity to shut us down.
That's exactly what they are waiting for.
He heard everything.
And then simply said
"You stay out of it.
Let Deva Raj do his work."
I came out of his room in tears,
heartbroken.
On one hand, he wants me to protect
his vision, his teachings, his commune
and him.
And now he says
"Stay out of it."
I could not tolerate it.
There I lost my patience.
[Niren]
In the United States
if the government
does decide to get you
they're going to get you.
I mean, they have the resources
and the ability
to basically go after anybody and succeed.
But to have it done to your community,
and to have the government
not be just be unwelcoming
but to twist and violate their own laws,
their own procedures,
and to be self-righteous in doing that.
Immigration was clearly a tool
to destroy the community.
I mean, immigration was the biggest tool
to destroy the community
because there was a whole lot
of pressure from Washington D.C.
to go after this guy
and get rid of this guy.
The immigration investigation started
when a political donor to the president
wrote to Edwin Meese
and told Meese about this cult in Oregon
and that they should get rid of Osho.
One of the INS commissioners
wrote in a memo
that perhaps it's wishful thinking,
but our pressures may force them
to pick up and leave.
You know, they were spending time
with anti-cult experts.
They were saying
that he cannot be a religious leader
because what he teaches
is the antipathy of religion.
In November of '82,
he applied for a visa
as a religious teacher and leader.
[male reporter] His goal was to convince
officials he should remain in the U.S.
He now wants to change his status
to that of religious worker
and remain
at his central Oregon ranch permanently.
The INS issued a denial.
[female reporter] The Immigration
and Naturalization Service has denied
the Bhagwan's request for an adjustment of
status from visitor to religious worker.
Deportation efforts are pending.
[male reporter] Trouble between
Rajneeshees and authorities has grown
since the government
ordered the Bhagwan deported.
[male reporter] Today's protest concerned
a meeting between the Rajneeshees
and the immigration officials.
I want that guru and his evil influence
out of my city.
The immigration office
knows he's in this country illegally
and I want them to uphold the law
and get him out.
[male reporter] The deportation order
against the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
is now under review.
No definite date has been set
for his return to India.
The denials were a trip.
Our position was that as a result of
his silence for about a year and a half,
he could not and had not
performed the duties that the organization
described in their own document.
The only thing I'm hearing from you,
and I want to give you an opportunity
to tell me something more
if there is something, is that the man
doesn't talk publicly. Is that it?
He was not participating actively
in the religious ceremonies
duties that the organization
described him as
Or described as necessary
to the performance of his duties.
All right, Niren,
do you want to respond?
[Niren]
Clearly, he qualified.
I mean, if he's not a religious teacher
and leader, nobody's a teacher and leader.
I was outraged by it.
The INS is now simply uncomfortable with
the ludicrous nature of their position,
and that is that if you're in silence
you can't be a religious leader.
It's a bit like saying if the pope
has laryngitis, he stops being pope.
It doesn't make sense.
It's our position, and we have evidence
that there is bias,
there is prejudgment,
there is religious discrimination,
there is racial discrimination.
They want him out of the country.
And to try and get rid
of the rest of the disciples
who are in this country legally as well.
[Niren]
I was actually a hero in that community
because I was, in a sense,
the tip of the spear,
fighting to survive.
People were so loving, so beautiful to me,
so happy and grateful
that I was there to do what I could do.
[laughing]
I formed a nonprofit legal corporation.
We ended up with having like 20 lawyers,
25 paralegals at the ranch.
Every issue was rebutted
with mountains of evidence.
[male reporter] On Thursday,
the guru's attorneys appeared
at the immigration service office
in downtown Portland
with over 1,000 pages of material
explaining why their guru
should be allowed to stay.
The INS had found that they couldn't,
they could not win.
Their whole investigation
was replete with bias.
Their decisions were against the law.
Are we running?
"On February 16, 1984,"
which happened to be my birthday,
"the INS granted his visa
as a religious teacher and leader."
They acknowledged he was
a religious teacher and leader.
[Niren]
All right! All right!
We didn't win much in Oregon
but we won that one.
[Niren]
But then
Charles Turner got involved in this case.
The INS, having failed to deport him,
they referred it to the U.S. Attorney
to try and find a criminal prosecution.
[Weaver] Charlie Turner was
the gold standard for law enforcement.
When Ronald Reagan was elected president,
Charlie Turner was appointed
the United States attorney
and asked me to serve
as his criminal division chief,
which I was honored to do.
So when the Immigration Service
returned to us in sometime in 1983,
the case was there, the evidence wasn't.
And Charlie and I picked up
the pace substantially.
The two of us did nothing
but work on this case for about two years.
These people were basically amoral people
who could not or would not conform
to the laws of our society.
But anytime you find people
that are unwilling or unable
to conform to the mores of society,
you find a person
who is a potential criminal.
[Niren]
Turner knew,
"Unless I prosecute it, he stays,
so I'm going to dig as much as I can."
If you take three giant steps backwards
and contemplate the fact
that one of the most discussed topics
of the philosophy
of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
was his view that marriage
is a worthless institution,
that it interferes with the freedom
that you need to achieve
spiritual enlightenment.
And suddenly you see so many Sannyasins
on the ranch getting married.
You know, conspiracy
is a federal prosecutor's best friend.
The conspiracy was an agreement
to defraud the United States.
So the typical case would be this:
Swami Prem Robert, an American citizen,
would be ordered to go to Houston, Texas.
Ma Hanna, a foreign Sannyasin,
would be ordered to go to Houston, Texas.
And the two of them would be instructed
to go back
to their original non-Sannyasin names.
They would each get jobs.
They would get an apartment together.
They would establish what ostensibly
looked like a committed life together.
They would go to city hall.
They would get a marriage license.
A few weeks later,
go to the Immigration Service and say,
"We are in a committed relationship,
and under the immigration laws
we would like a green card."
A green card would issue. Zoom!
Both parties make a hasty retreat
back to the ranch
and return to their original lives
and original partners that they had.
And this was done in Dallas,
Southern California,
Seattle,
Trenton, New Jersey, and in Philadelphia,
all around the United States
so that the pattern was harder to detect.
This was the largest immigration fraud
case in the history of the United States.
And Charlie and I,
as we pursued the case
the conclusion was unavoidable
that Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh himself
was involved in the planning
and execution of this.
By that time, I think it was
the safe assumption on everyone's part,
including the Rajneeshees,
that if he was charged and deported,
Rajneeshpuram would disappear
off the face of the earth.
[Jane] About this time when one was called
into Sheela's room in Jesus Grove,
a list was being made
of enemies of the commune.
People were talking
about killing other people.
Sheela considered Mr. Turner
a real enemy of the commune.
Mr. Turner had the last say
when it came to whether or not Bhagwan
could stay in America.
When there was talk of shooting people,
Sheela had said,
"Shanti B will do it. She's a good shot."
It was just put out there that,
"Okay, I'm the good shot. I'll do that."
Sheela told me I was to go to Portland
and meet up with a woman there.
And when I met her, she was a Sannyasin,
but wearing regular street clothes.
And she took me with her
to an apartment in Portland
which she told me was a safe house.
In the apartment, the cupboards
were full of regular street clothes,
and she told me to choose
from these clothes something to wear.
Somebody came to us and told us what kind
of guns he thought we should get.
He said we should get smaller guns.
Pistols because they
would be easier to transport.
The small group in the car I was in
drove to where Mr. Turner worked.
And we sat in McDonald's,
early in the morning.
Drank coffee. For the first time
in my life I smoked a cigarette.
But we were watching
the park house entrance
where Mr. Turner was expected to walk out.
And at that point my companion said to me,
"Come on. We'll go down
and we'll show you where he comes out."
And pointed out where
Mr. Turner parked his car.
I was saying to myself,
"What are we doing?
This is absolutely crazy. This is like
We're in the middle of town.
And we're gonna kill somebody here?"
No, he didn't come out that day,
so I didn't ever see him.
And as we drove away
back towards the main road,
the three people in the car,
including myself,
talked about the possibility of perhaps
shooting him there in the park house.
[Zaitz] I've been a journalist
all of my life.
I did my first newspaper
when I was in the third grade,
and I've done it ever since,
for 50 years in the state of Oregon.
I feel I was born
to be an investigative reporter.
I just have a knack for it.
I have an inclination. I can find stories.
The best ones are those
that I sort of have an instinct for it
that something isn't right here
and I'm going to dig into it
and I'm going to find out why.
We came into it when the controversy
between the Rajneeshee community
and Oregon was ramping up considerably.
There were political tensions,
religious tensions, civil rights tensions.
The influx of people, the influx of money
was continuing to grow.
So the question loomed pretty large
for us, suddenly, is who were they?
Where did they come from?
Why are they in Oregon?
And what's really going on here?
I got assigned to go to India
because they came from India
and they left for a reason.
I collected, like,
35,000 pages of material
and established the history
of the organization.
It became quite clear
that the commune had fled India
ahead of getting indicted
and arrested by Indian authorities.
They were facing immigration fraud
tax issues at several government levels
the smuggling in currency, in gold
arsons, sophisticated criminal conduct.
I spent 18 months writing
what became a 20-part series,
which to this day remains the longest
series ever published by The Oregonian.
I went down to the ranch, to city hall,
and we asked to see every check
that the city had issued.
It was a spider web of financial contacts.
The Oregon operation
had an insatiable need for cash,
to create this illusion
of great prosperity,
that we're building nirvana in the desert.
Well, that took money.
I think it became very apparent that this
was no longer a sustainable fantasy.
[man]
You came from where?
The honeymoon is over at Rajneeshpuram
between the followers of the Bhagwan
and many of the street people
they invited there.
The street people claim that yesterday
Ma Anand Sheela called
the entire street people population
into this large assembly hall
and held a trial of sorts.
[Sheela]
So, what I would like you to understand
that I'm not going
to tolerate problem-makers,
any sort of hanky-panky from today on.
Tomorrow morning you will start receiving
messages that you need to leave,
you need to leave.
She says, "You. You're on the bus."
And the man is immediately escorted out
and held under tight security
while he packs his things and leaves.
I saw five or six guys just completely,
you know,
like, physically being dragged out,
you know, by the security guards.
[Gary] I got a call around midnight
from the governor's office
telling me that Rajneeshees
were driving around The Dalles in vans
and dropping homeless people off
in neighborhoods
and if anybody encountered them
and asked what they were doing,
they were pointing automatic weapons
at them and making them back away.
And she said, "What should we do?"
To this day, that's probably still
the most unusual and difficult request
for legal advice that I've gotten
from a client.
Up until now,
most of the folks who've left the ranch
have left of their own accord.
But this latest batch seems
to represent something new.
Rajneeshees are booting people out
wholesale, and they're getting physical.
There were people on the streets
that came to our place
that were not in their full capacity,
that really required major medication.
There were people who were violent.
There were people who were
really living on the edge of psychosis.
[female reporter]
Rajneesh officials today said
the four men who were dropped off
in Portland are troublemakers.
They call us troublemakers, yes,
and we have openly admitted
that we did act out of anger.
We were going to tip
their, uh, ticket booth over
and start tipping all their A-frames over
right down the line.
They couldn't control
those independent street people
[chuckles]
even with tranquilizers.
[chuckles]
They couldn't do it.
Well, I wanted to check it out.
And the guy that we're worshipping,
he looks like a damn devil.
[male reporter]
What would you tell another young person?
Not to come
unless you want to be a queer.
'Cause there's all kind of queers,
I seen it myself.
They were kissing and hugging,
and the lesbians too.
Men are sleeping in this room here
on the floor, on benches, on the chairs,
wherever they can find a space.
They all came from Rajneeshpuram
and now they're all stranded
in the city of Portland.
And then they ended up
in towns in central Oregon.
Some of them then later in Portland,
where they begged or stole
what they needed to survive.
So, it created enormous tension
inside the community
and outside the community.
Some residents of Madras, Oregon
say they fear for their safety tonight
as disillusioned street people
continue to leave Rajneeshpuram.
The residents of that town
are being advised by the mayor
to lock their doors to protect themselves
against homeless people
who might leave nearby Rajneeshpuram.
Some people had reached
the point of hysteria,
being afraid to go out
of the house, you know?
The people in Madras
are fearing for their lives.
They are afraid that they will show up,
and some might maybe even
slaughter them in their beds.
[female reporter] People of Madras, Oregon
have thrown up their hands.
They don't know what to do with
the rejected recruits from Rajneeshpuram
who have converged on their town.
[man] The rejects that they don't want,
dump them in here on us?
Just send them back where they come from.
We're not obligated
to take care of their rejects.
[man]
We don't want them here.
Now what's gonna happen
if they dump them here in town
and they don't have any money?
You tell me.
I think it's time
that somebody does something.
The release of the homeless people
and how that was done,
it was pretty obvious
that things were sort of boiling up
and coming to a head here
with this election process.
I'm scared just like the rest of us
around here, you know?
We're just, uh, worried,
and we won't know until the sixth,
I guess, how this is gonna come out.
You know, you can only push so far.
Wasco County was looking for a fight.
Last night a large group
of angry Oregonians gathered
to map out anti-Rajneesh strategy.
Although they'd been warned against it,
many in the group vowed to follow through
with a plan to register illegally
to vote against the Rajneeshees.
[female reporter] The plan,
organized by Albany resident JoAnne Boies,
is to register
the day before the election,
vote, and leave the next day.
Let me tell you,
if you don't get off your duffs,
you're gonna be wearing a picture
of the Bhagwan around your neck.
[cheering and applause]
We don't want them
taking over the state of Oregon
or any other state in the United States.
This is our country.
[female anchor] The controversy in Wasco
County has made some national headlines
concerning whether or not the Rajneeshees
would actually go to the poll.
A record voter turnout is expected there.
[male reporter] Voters were turning out
at a record pace at Wasco County polls.
Lines began forming when the polls opened
at 8 a.m., and they never let up.
[woman] Never had
anything like this before.
May have this crowd
maybe six, seven o'clock at night,
but not like this in the morning.
[Durow]
It was a big number.
I think it showed
they were paying attention to the news.
They understood what was at stake,
and they came out and voted
to protect their own democracy.
Sheela's been saying all the time
what they're going to do.
You know, and that's That's dirty pool.
The people don't want the red shirts
to take us over, I guess. [chuckles]
[male reporter]
How important is this election?
Very important.
Um
We need the votes for our side.
The Rajneeshees were way under
what they needed to do a block vote
and get their own people
into the county commission.
The problem was that Wasco County
was a little bigger
than the Rajneeshees could control
just by sheer numbers.
And it fell apart before the election.
November sixth means different things
for different people,
but today at Rajneeshpuram, its meaning
is being translated into protest.
-the Constitution!
-[crowd] Yeah!
-Telling us we can't vote!
-[cheering]
[male reporter] Voters at Rajneeshpuram
were greeted by demonstrators
protesting because they cannot enter
the voting booth.
What people told me
was they think this process stinks.
Anybody feel that way?
[cheering and applause]
And this is democracy.
Well, I've had enough of it.
[cheering and applause]
[male reporter] Sheela dropped by
to view the proceedings.
She said even if she could vote,
she would not.
It was misuse of power
and it was misuse of power
against their own citizens.
Against Americans.
Against American war veterans.
This ugly mentality,
I have no words for.
Anti-climactic best describes
Wasco County's election.
Fears that Rajneeshees would cast
enough ballots to take over the county
proved all for naught.
Well, although that Rajneeshee takeover
threat never really got off the ground,
it did spur a record voter turnout.
Ninety-three percent turnout.
That is really something.
[male reporter]
Pretty amazing and the county clerk
was very happy about that.
Frankly, everyone in Wasco County is also
happy that the Rajneeshees did not vote.
We did it, we did it correctly,
we did it legally, we did it properly,
and the integrity of the ballot
has been preserved.
[female reporter]
Officials here share a sigh of relief
and a sense of pride
in a community that stood together
facing one of the greatest challenges
to the democratic process
any county in the country
has had to endure.
Well, in Sheela's case, um
she did not take losing lightly.
She did not leave her guns at the door.
She wasn't calm for very long.
She got militant pretty darn fast.
If they want to demolish us,
they can throw a bomb on us.
We'll be happily ready to die.
But to become victim
of fascist government,
that's not Rajneeshee way.
It's like Hitler's troops are waiting
to massacre the Allies.
As things began to unravel,
there was a great risk that it
could boil over into actual violence.
Oregonians.
It's a rare breed.
[laughs] That's the only thing I can say.
It's a rare breed.
[male reporter] Next thing they want
to know is what do you mean by that?
What do I mean by that?
They haven't learned their lesson yet.
By 1984, this whole thing was on fire.
I mean, on fire.
I'm sound asleep and the phone rang
in the middle of a deep sleep.
And it was my secretary
who had been called and said that,
"You gotta come down
to the planning office.
There's been a fire."
Sure enough, there was a fire.
[chuckles]
What they did was two or three broke in
and almost every file was pulled
out of its drawer and thrown around
and they cut the candles off and squirted
everything with the lighter fluid.
Once it caught fire, everything
on the wall, it was all blistered.
One day everybody got a box of chocolates.
A box of chocolates arrives.
[man]
Dark Secrets.
Outside, they look just like
ordinary chocolates, but inside
And it says, "Thank you for your support
to preserve the Columbia River Gorge."
So we open the box
and we start eating them.
A day or two later, Bob's riding
in the elevator and he sees Bowen Blair,
director of Friends of the Columbia Gorge,
and says,
"Bowen, thank you
for the chocolates you sent us."
And Bowen says, "I'm not aware
that we sent you any chocolate."
They found one candy
in the center of the box
with a pinprick in the bottom of it, uh
that was loaded with something fun.
Mike Sullivan,
the district attorney in Jefferson County,
almost died, and nobody knew why.
My skin was starting
to turn different shades of colors
and my lips turned blue
because of a lack of oxygen.
[Durow]
Bill Hulse traveled to the ranch,
and at some point
they offered him some water.
Having drunk that water,
I came down with a violent, uh
stomach bowel upset.
[Durow]
He became violently ill.
We almost lost Bill.
And it was It was touch and go.
People feared for their lives
and there was a reason for that.
We in the U.S. Attorney's office
were concerned about our safety.
Two state police detectives showed up
and they took me into one
of our small interview rooms,
and they proceeded to explain to me
that they had developed
credible information
that I had been targeted for murder.
These folks were so diabolical
that they would consider killing me
for doing my job.
The Rajneeshee rumor hotline has been
operating only since yesterday afternoon,
but already it has received
up to 3,000 phone calls
from citizens worried about
the Rajneeshees.
State police.
Oh, sure. I can answer that.
The challenge was to sift through
what's real and what's not,
because some of the things that we
were hearing were just fantastical.
A very strange story continues to unfold
at the Oregon commune of Rajneeshpuram.
[male reporter] There's a new accusation
against Sheela and her gang,
and it was a plot to blow up
the Wasco County courthouse.
[male reporter] An Air Rajneesh pilot
says he refused a demand from Sheela
to bomb a nearby courthouse.
People prefer to believe the rumors.
People prefer
not to be confused by the facts.
And as long as that's the case, we
will have possible violence because of it.
[male reporter] One rumor claimed
the Rajneeshees
caused the recent salmonella outbreak.
Other callers worried
about weapons in Rajneeshpuram.
The hotline says
it knows of nothing illegal.
The threat comes not from Rajneeshpuram
and Rajneeshees.
The threat of violence comes
from these people and people like them.
People who are bigoted.
And for this court to allow itself to be
degraded in this way is disgusting.
The state of Oregon is dead.
[Gary] We had no doubt
that Sheela and her crew
were were very deeply involved.
It's hard to believe
that anybody would do that.
And yet in retrospect, we now know
that much of what we were hearing
was true.
[Niren] We were in the middle
of the battle, but we weren't winning.
Sheela intended to beat the state
and she didn't.
She was deteriorating
in a way that you could see visibly.
I think the fear
and the anxiety and the tension
I think it wore her thin,
but we didn't know how thin
she had been worn.
And not just parents who are retarded,
teachers Uh, students
I saw more paranoia, and not just paranoia
from the people outside.
Now it was moving inside.
[Jane]
There had always been some tension
between Sheela
and the people in Bhagwan's house.
Sheela did not like
Bhagwan's personal physician,
and Hasya married Deva Raj,
Bhagwan's doctor.
I do know that a problem
between her and myself began
shortly after I married Deva Raj.
Something changed,
very shortly after my marriage.
[Jane] So, Hasya had even more access
to Bhagwan than Sheela did.
For Sheela, this was the last straw.
She realized that she had lost the battle.
And in the middle of all this,
unknown to Bhagwan,
she had his room wiretapped
in order to protect him.
Sheela would be aware
of any possible danger to Bhagwan.
I felt she wanted to hear and control
what was being said to Bhagwan.
And we had a tower around his house.
This was where the recordings were made.
I would be up there
and K.D. would climb up
and take out a cassette out
of the recorder and put in another one.
And then this cassette would be taken down
and somebody would sit and listen to it
and report to Sheela what was being said.
[Jane]
Sheela played a tape to me
that was more shocking
than anything I could have imagined.
Bhagwan was asking his doctor
how death could be induced
in a dignified, painless way.
Bhagwan's doctor explained to him,
first morphine would be injected
into the blood vessel.
quinone would be added
that would paralyze the body
and then a third substance
would be added to stop the heart.
On the wiretap,
Bhagwan's doctor said to him
that the medications had arrived
and Bhagwan told the doctor to bury them
in a safe place in the garden
until they were needed.
Bhagwan ordered Sheela to arrange
for the building of a crematorium.
He also told Sheela that he would die
on a Master's Day, the sixth of July.
It was too awful to contemplate.
I didn't know what it meant.
It frightened me terribly.
But it was just awful.
From that day on, I listened to Sheela
when she talked
about the dangers to Bhagwan
of his doctor and his dentist.
We complain about not to use
rats and rabbits
for medical experiment.
And they take this intellectual giant
for this stupid experiment.
How stupid they can be.
They have no ethics.
They have no ethics in medical field.
They have no human ethics.
And definitely, they don't know
the relationship of guru and disciple.
[Jane]
On the eve of Master's Day,
July the sixth, 1985
Sheela called a group of us to her house.
Sheela looked terrible that evening.
She was really pale.
And she told us,
"Tomorrow Bhagwan is going
to orchestrate his death.
Tomorrow Deva Raj is going to kill him.
We've got to stop it.
We have to do something.
If we can stop Deva Raj,
if we can kill Deva Raj,
Bhagwan won't die.
Who will do it?"
Nobody spoke.
We were all in shocked silence.
It was impossible. It was just
impossible that Bhagwan should die.
But when somebody spoke
and said, "I will do it,"
that was me. That was my voice
that rose up in that silence
and said, "I will do it."
And then there was
just general pandemonium.
People were all talking at once,
but I had retreated into myself.
I wasn't really listening.
I didn't really hear what they said.
And after, when everybody had gone,
I went by myself, completely alone.
I went to Sheela's nurse.
She gave me what I would need.
A syringe, the substance.
I went to the clothing room
and chose the clothes I would wear
so that I had a pocket
to put the syringe in.
It was all about
keeping Bhagwan alive.
Bhagwan must live.
[Jane] When I dressed that morning to go,
I was
I was not afraid.
I felt very strong
and very clear in what I was doing.
I went to the festival.
I felt like a medieval knight.
I felt like Joan of Arc
who was going into battle.
I sat close behind the doctor.
The festivities took their known pattern.
There was enormous noise, music, dancing.
[cheering]
And as Bhagwan stood up to leave,
and everybody cheered
and waved their hands
in absolute ecstasy and joy
I approached Deva Raj
and said something into his ear.
And as he leaned towards me,
I pushed the syringe.
He instantly grabbed behind him,
grabbed my hand with the syringe in it,
and there was a bit of a struggle,
but I got it out again and threw it away.
The woman who had arranged to pick it up,
picked it up.
I behaved to Deva Raj
as though nothing had happened.
I looked at him quizzically,
"What's wrong with you?
What are you What's the problem?"
He stood up, staggered, walked backwards.
I followed him.
"What's wrong with you?
What's the problem?
What is What's the problem?"
And as he staggered away from me
I turned and walked away.
I walked through the crowd.
I walked out the other side.
And I walked
back to Jesus Grove where I lived.
Completely alone.
Nobody spoke to me and I spoke to nobody.
And I wanted to be alone.
There was the part of me who felt
I had saved Bhagwan's life.
I had done what I had to do.
But deep inside of me, I was shattered.
I had grown up clearly understanding
that thou shalt not kill.
And now I had tried to kill somebody.
What had happened?
I knew I had gone beyond the pale.
I knew I had stepped over the line.
And on that day,
I also knew I had to leave.
[Sheela] When you see
some photos of me in last months,
I was worn out.
I was totally heartbroken.
Every night, my mother would come.
She sits on my bed
and pours tears,
"If you will continue like this
you will die soon."
I can still see my mother's pain.
This was
the straw that broke camel's back.
Two days after, I left Rajneeshpuram.
Those last two days
they were full of pain.
To leave Bhagwan
a man I thought was unsep
Unseparable from me.
I'm taking the decision to leave.
I'm taking decision to leave
from all these beautiful people
who love me.
I knew I would be excommunicated.
But I'm leaving.
I had learned from Bhagwan,
burn your bridges.
Go forward.
Sheela and her closest associates took off
in broad daylight aboard this airplane,
leaving Rajneeshees to wonder
what other secrets they left behind.
Sheela was looking very serious.
And I looked around
I didn't know what was happening.
I said, "What's happening?"
And Sheela looked at me
and she said, "I'm leaving."
And in that minute, it just came.
I said, "If you're leaving,
I'm leaving too."
Thirteenth of September, 1985
was my personal independence day.
That was the day I left Bhagwan.
The main people
who work with me day and night,
they left with me.
Their loyalty to Bhagwan,
they had transferred it to me
because they saw genuine loyalty in me.
[male reporter]
The pilot who flew them out says
they left with 20 pieces of luggage.
About 100 Rajneeshees
gathered here to see them off.
Once in the air, the former president
of the commune was heard to say,
"At least we left like queens."
[Niren] When I came to work, somebody
told me that Sheela had left the ranch
and a bunch of her people
had gone with her.
And I
I thought that
I mean, I was just I was
aghast Not
I I was just in shock that Sheela
would just up and leave overnight.
[female reporter]
The commune is rocked by news
that Bhagwan's fiery personal secretary,
Ma Anand Sheela,
has left Rajneeshpuram with group leaders.
[Jane] But once my daughter
and I were on the plane
and the break had been really made,
I was overwhelmed.
I had left the master.
This is impossible.
We were flying away.
We were flying to a new life
and we didn't know what it was.
Time had come.
I had to go on my own.
I had to figure out life for myself.
And after I left Bhagwan,
we never cross each other's path again.
The person who was Sheela's secretary
called Lao Tzu house
and made an appointment to speak to Osho
and went up and spoke to Osho
and told him what was going on.
And he was not happy. He was
[chuckles] He was
He had vengeance.
He was going to prosecute.
He was interested in getting her.
He wanted her caught.
And within 24 hours of a lot
of that information coming to him,
he came out and spoke.
I fully expected the shit to hit the fan.
The leader of the sect
is Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.
He has been something of a mystery
to say the least.
He has not spoken publicly in four years,
but now, for reasons
that are not entirely clear to us,
he has finally broken his silence.
And there's more going on at the ranch.
The Bhagwan silence is over.
News 8 learned this afternoon
that just two hours from now
the Bhagwan will begin speaking
to Rajneeshee faithful.
[woman] We're gonna be having
a press conference this evening.
And it's going to be with Bhagwan.
We're just announcing it to the press
in case they want to come.
[Bhagwan] I have been silent
for three and a half years.
The people who were in power
took advantage of my silence.
Sheela and her group,
they tried to kill three people.
They have attempted
to murder people in the commune.
They have attempted
to murder people in The Dalles.
They have attempted
bugging people's houses.
My own house.
These people are absolutely criminals.
Inhuman.
Brutal.
Fascist in their outlook.
On a different level,
the news out of Rajneeshpuram
is getting more bizarre every day.
[male reporter] The number one source
of new rumors is Bhagwan himself.
Just about every appearance,
there's a new accusation.
A palace coup,
alleged theft of millions of dollars.
The whereabouts of Ma Anand Sheela
are still a mystery tonight.
According to Bhagwan,
it was all the work of Sheela
and what he calls her gang of fascists.
She should have been here and faced me.
She did not even come
to say goodbye to me.
People who don't commit crime
don't escape like that.
How long you can hide?
And if the police
is not going to take the action
then my people will take the action.
[cheering and applause]
[helicopter whirring]
[Durow] I was hired by Wasco County
as the senior planner in July of 1981.
We had to make a number of trips
down to the ranch,
evaluate what was built
and then to start issuing citations.
None of those trips were very pleasant.
As we made the turn out of Antelope,
you always get a knot in your stomach.
And we were required to only go
with the sheriff's deputy.
We also wore
bulletproof vests under our clothing
because there were a lot of guns.
There were a lot of street people.
So, we were out there on an inspection.
We got trapped behind a truck
at an angle across the road.
We didn't think it was a setup.
[male reporter] You're getting in the way.
We're trying to take pictures
-and you're standing in the way is all.
-Sorry.
[male reporter]
They're blocking the road effectively?
They did an excellent job
of blocking the road.
Couldn't have it any done better.
[Durow]
And the moment Sheela showed up,
I said,
"You know, this is becoming a circus."
[male reporter]
Sheela, was this an accident?
I don't know. I just come here.
What do you want me to do?
I've just come. Let me see.
Do you want to move?
Let me see what it is.
[male reporter]
Is this is a joke? Are you joking?
No, I'm not joking, I'm serious.
This my few people's lives
is concerned here. This is no joke.
[Durow] So, we drove off the main road,
turned around
and immediately started coming out.
And there were
three single-wide structures.
And I wanted to go in,
so we got out of the car.
K.D. pulled in right ahead of us.
I said, "I'd like to go in this building."
And he said,
"Oh, it's just janitorial supplies.
You know, there's no need to"
He went up and said, "Oh, it's locked
and I don't have the key."
I can still pretty much hear those words.
And so we didn't really know
what we were going to do,
and it was getting darker.
So, we felt for our protection,
we're going back to The Dalles.
So, we all got in the car and left.
I thought about that often since.
Had I pressed the issue,
what would have happened that day?
Turns out that was their lab.
[female reporter]
Health officials are puzzled by this one.
They say they've never seen a case
where the symptoms
have developed so quickly.
They'll be working over the weekend
to try to pinpoint the cause.
In the meantime,
they're asking people who develop symptoms
to contact their county
health department immediately.
[female reporter]
Phones were ringing off the hook
at Wasco County Health Department
for two days.
The callers are sick. They're throwing up,
have headaches and diarrhea.
Everyone is frightened.
And I don't blame them. I'm frightened.
I wouldn't want to go out and eat either
if I thought there was something
going around out here
and not knowing what it is.
An investigator
from the State Health Division
arrived in The Dalles this afternoon
and one from the Center
for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia
is due in today or tomorrow,
all in an effort to try and find out what
is causing this mysterious food poisoning.
[male reporter] Meanwhile,
Oregon congressman Jim Weaver
is organizing two days of hearings
in Portland next week,
saying it's time government agencies
address the issue.
Strange things are happening. Just saying
"remain calm" doesn't do any good.
That's one of the reasons
I'm gonna hold a hearing.
I'm going to ask the federal agencies,
"What can you do?"
Mr. Speaker.
"Mr. Speaker, I have a strange
and terrifying tale to tell the House.
It is about a town that was poisoned."
Who would do such a terrifying thing?
Who would poison a whole town?
"Seven hundred were taken violently ill."
[Weaver]
Is there a madman lurking in The Dalles?
There must be such a person or persons
with a motive and innate ability
to assault this town
for it actually happened.
Ma Anand Sheela [chuckles]
was a piece of work, let me tell you.
[laughs]
[Marlon Williams'
"Strange Things" playing]
I hear strange things
Creeping in the night ♪
I have strange dreams ♪
In the bed where Lucy died ♪
Salmonella outbreak in The Dalles.
Salmonella can be very serious,
causing extreme dehydration.
That salmonella outbreak
[female reporter]
A mysterious outbreak left 750 people ill.
[male reporter] Food poisonings
of more than 750 people in The Dalles.
Well, certainly it was unprecedented,
uh in terms of the number of people
that were getting sick by the salmonella.
And the numbers just kept growing
and coming in and, um, it was chaotic.
When she expired ♪
They all went back to the city ♪
[Weaver] Someone is out there
who poisoned an entire town.
If they're capable of such a heinous act,
they're capable of anything.
Started getting sick to my stomach,
you know?
And I got chills and you get to shaking,
and you get so cold
that you just can't get warmed up.
My son-in-law was admitted
to the hospital this morning.
And my daughter is pretty sick
and she's also pregnant,
so we're quite concerned over that.
[Durow] Once people started getting sick
by the dozens and then hundreds,
we set up sort of a command area
in the health department
and we started tracking
what was going on.
[Durow] Where people had eaten,
what they had eaten.
And there didn't seem
to be any particular source
that all this information was pointing to.
It was sort of just scattered all over
and everyone,
including the Center for Disease Control,
couldn't make heads or tails
of what was going on.
Well, we didn't know, and we engaged
in good old ordinary investigation
to try to piece together
what the facts were.
[female reporter] So far,
three restaurants have been linked
to the outbreak:
Arlo's, The Portage Inn, and Shakey's.
But health officials say they don't know
if the contamination is from a patron
or from the food handlers
at the restaurant.
[male reporter] The preliminary conclusion
from state investigators in The Dalles
blames contamination of raw foods
by infected food handlers.
The health authorities blamed it
on food handlers.
It's clear that many restaurant employees
live in the same household.
So, we believe it's very plausible
that there was sort of
a chain of transmission.
[female reporter] They advised
the food workers be better trained.
And I said that's the silliest thing
I've ever heard.
Food handlers have nothing
to do with this.
This is one of the most greatest
terrorist acts in our country,
the poisoning of an entire town.
Different people in the office at the time
had different degrees of certainty about
the fact that there were
That the Rajneeshees were involved.
The Rajneesh Medical Corporation
has a well-equipped medical laboratory
at Rajneeshpuram.
I can only conclude and very positively
conclude that sabotage did take place.
[female reporter]
Today the Rajneeshees blasted Weaver.
[male reporter] A spokeswoman
for the Rajneesh Medical Corporation
called Weaver's speech outrageous
and purely malicious.
It's absolutely false.
It's an ugly, cowardly lie.
Jim Weaver from halfway across the country
attacked a religious minority
here in his own home state.
It's a despicable and outrageous thing,
and the Rajneesh Medical Corporation
is outraged.
I was also coordinating
the legal department,
and so I had certain responsibilities
that I need to ensure were taken care of.
I was sent by Sheela to support them.
I was filled with rage,
and I did a Sheela.
And we are going to infect.
We are going to infect
not only The Dalles,
not only Portland, not only Salem,
not only the whole state of Oregon,
and the whole country
of the United States of America.
Rajneeshees are going
to infect the whole world
with joy and with laughter
on epidemic proportions.
[Weaver]
All hell broke loose.
The whole state went bananas.
And they made me look like an idiot.
Main article written
in The Oregonian newspaper began,
"Weaver in another rambling,
incoherent speech."
My 18-year-old daughter
thought I was crazy,
because I was taking a lot of shit.
I have no direct concrete evidence
to implicate anyone.
I want to make that very clear.
No direct concrete evidence
to implicate anyone.
[female reporter]
But you have some of your own ideas?
I have my own views,
there is no question of that.
[Weaver] And Bill Bowerman came
into my office and said,
"Jim, do you know that these people
are murderers and cutthroats?"
And that was enough for me to say,
"Hey, wait a minute.
Nobody else is doing anything about it,
so I'm going to."
And I began investigating.
[Jane]
Sheela was in a really difficult position.
Because the Share-A-Home project
was failing,
we had Sheela on somewhat shaky ground.
So, when Bhagwan told Sheela
she needed to be sure
that Rajneeshees were elected
to the county commission,
it was for her so important
because this may mean the difference
between her remaining
his secretary or not.
By this time, a small group of people,
rich people in their own right,
had come to Rajneeshpuram.
They were known as the Hollywood crowd.
This was something very radical.
Her position as his secretary was
in jeopardy.
[female reporter] When we learned
that upscale, well-educated professionals
in Los Angeles
were following an Indian guru
and giving their money
to support meditation centers
here in Southern California,
we wanted to know more.
[Niren]
And there was a new group.
They called them the Hollywood crowd.
Hasya was the center of this group.
I've always wanted nothing but the best.
I would call myself
a connoisseur of the best.
She had been married to Al Ruddy,
the producer of The Godfather.
-[Clint Eastwood] And the winner
-[applause]
And the winner is [clears throat]
Albert S. Ruddy, The Godfather.
[Niren]
Hasya was soft-spoken,
made a lot of money.
And they had this big house.
Big white Mediterranean kind of structure.
Big swimming pool.
I actually was in that house
a number of times.
It was a lot of fun.
They start throwing parties
back in Hollywood
to raise money for Bhagwan.
[female reporter] John bought this mansion
in West Hollywood for the Bhagwan,
the perfect place
for their Sannyasin friends
to meditate and collect money.
[John]
We're looking for a way to express
his essence in Los Angeles
in a way that people could come into it
and just go, "Wow."
[female reporter]
It's used as a sort of recruiting center.
Wealthy people are invited to parties
and introduced to the joys
of surrendering to the master.
The Hollywood people,
they start feeding Bhagwan
with brochures of fantastic jewelry.
Things that Sheela
would never have shown him
because she knew he would want them.
He was like this This kind of bird,
this blackbird that collects shiny things.
The Hollywood people
bought him a diamond watch.
It cost a million dollars.
[John] He likes the fine things,
like all of us do.
And more than that, his disciples want
to give him the best of everything.
How much money, John,
do you think you've given Bhagwan?
Few hundred thousand.
-Hasya?
-Also a few hundred thousand.
[Jane] By this time, the Hollywood people
had direct access to Bhagwan.
Access to Bhagwan was everything.
[cameras clicking]
[Jane] He would invite them to come
and spend time with him
without Sheela to accompany them.
[Niren]
When you start having Hasya,
a rich woman from California
who had fairly recently come to the ranch,
Sheela felt threatened.
She suspected that there were other people
now who were having his ear.
[Jane] Bhagwan even went so far
as to call Sheela into his house
and to explain to her
another corporation was to be set up,
and Hasya and John
would run this corporation.
That made Sheela really, really angry.
[Sheela]
I remember my father
he would always say,
"You and Bhagwan are meant to be together.
You are a team that is unbreakable."
When Bhagwan is behind me,
I always felt I could do anything.
I had this power of trust and love.
Protecting Bhagwan's vision,
protecting Bhagwan's people
was highest in my existence.
I took his people as my people.
I was with Bhagwan
because I fell in love with him.
And we went through a big journey.
But, unfortunately
Bhagwan got sidetracked.
Some of his talks were not so coherent.
You see this behavior changes.
Bhagwan started going down the hill.
Bhagwan had started speaking to Sheela
about a doomsday scenario.
The world would be in chaos
and fall apart.
His Sannyasins would be safe.
There would
be underground dwellings built.
They would be able to emerge
as the new man and live his vision.
So, I see this irrational behavior.
He has to go. Press must go.
[Sheela] One day our pharmacist
comes totally upset to me.
Brought with him the prescription
that was written by Bhagwan's doctor
to get drugs for Bhagwan.
I was horrified.
This rich group of people have
gotten Bhagwan hooked onto the drugs,
combination of laughing gas, valium.
[chuckling]
To wait till the evening,
I go speak with Bhagwan.
It was a long day for me
because I was so upset.
I gave every argument
that I could think of.
The drugs would be attracting
every legal entity to shut us down.
That's exactly what they are waiting for.
He heard everything.
And then simply said
"You stay out of it.
Let Deva Raj do his work."
I came out of his room in tears,
heartbroken.
On one hand, he wants me to protect
his vision, his teachings, his commune
and him.
And now he says
"Stay out of it."
I could not tolerate it.
There I lost my patience.
[Niren]
In the United States
if the government
does decide to get you
they're going to get you.
I mean, they have the resources
and the ability
to basically go after anybody and succeed.
But to have it done to your community,
and to have the government
not be just be unwelcoming
but to twist and violate their own laws,
their own procedures,
and to be self-righteous in doing that.
Immigration was clearly a tool
to destroy the community.
I mean, immigration was the biggest tool
to destroy the community
because there was a whole lot
of pressure from Washington D.C.
to go after this guy
and get rid of this guy.
The immigration investigation started
when a political donor to the president
wrote to Edwin Meese
and told Meese about this cult in Oregon
and that they should get rid of Osho.
One of the INS commissioners
wrote in a memo
that perhaps it's wishful thinking,
but our pressures may force them
to pick up and leave.
You know, they were spending time
with anti-cult experts.
They were saying
that he cannot be a religious leader
because what he teaches
is the antipathy of religion.
In November of '82,
he applied for a visa
as a religious teacher and leader.
[male reporter] His goal was to convince
officials he should remain in the U.S.
He now wants to change his status
to that of religious worker
and remain
at his central Oregon ranch permanently.
The INS issued a denial.
[female reporter] The Immigration
and Naturalization Service has denied
the Bhagwan's request for an adjustment of
status from visitor to religious worker.
Deportation efforts are pending.
[male reporter] Trouble between
Rajneeshees and authorities has grown
since the government
ordered the Bhagwan deported.
[male reporter] Today's protest concerned
a meeting between the Rajneeshees
and the immigration officials.
I want that guru and his evil influence
out of my city.
The immigration office
knows he's in this country illegally
and I want them to uphold the law
and get him out.
[male reporter] The deportation order
against the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
is now under review.
No definite date has been set
for his return to India.
The denials were a trip.
Our position was that as a result of
his silence for about a year and a half,
he could not and had not
performed the duties that the organization
described in their own document.
The only thing I'm hearing from you,
and I want to give you an opportunity
to tell me something more
if there is something, is that the man
doesn't talk publicly. Is that it?
He was not participating actively
in the religious ceremonies
duties that the organization
described him as
Or described as necessary
to the performance of his duties.
All right, Niren,
do you want to respond?
[Niren]
Clearly, he qualified.
I mean, if he's not a religious teacher
and leader, nobody's a teacher and leader.
I was outraged by it.
The INS is now simply uncomfortable with
the ludicrous nature of their position,
and that is that if you're in silence
you can't be a religious leader.
It's a bit like saying if the pope
has laryngitis, he stops being pope.
It doesn't make sense.
It's our position, and we have evidence
that there is bias,
there is prejudgment,
there is religious discrimination,
there is racial discrimination.
They want him out of the country.
And to try and get rid
of the rest of the disciples
who are in this country legally as well.
[Niren]
I was actually a hero in that community
because I was, in a sense,
the tip of the spear,
fighting to survive.
People were so loving, so beautiful to me,
so happy and grateful
that I was there to do what I could do.
[laughing]
I formed a nonprofit legal corporation.
We ended up with having like 20 lawyers,
25 paralegals at the ranch.
Every issue was rebutted
with mountains of evidence.
[male reporter] On Thursday,
the guru's attorneys appeared
at the immigration service office
in downtown Portland
with over 1,000 pages of material
explaining why their guru
should be allowed to stay.
The INS had found that they couldn't,
they could not win.
Their whole investigation
was replete with bias.
Their decisions were against the law.
Are we running?
"On February 16, 1984,"
which happened to be my birthday,
"the INS granted his visa
as a religious teacher and leader."
They acknowledged he was
a religious teacher and leader.
[Niren]
All right! All right!
We didn't win much in Oregon
but we won that one.
[Niren]
But then
Charles Turner got involved in this case.
The INS, having failed to deport him,
they referred it to the U.S. Attorney
to try and find a criminal prosecution.
[Weaver] Charlie Turner was
the gold standard for law enforcement.
When Ronald Reagan was elected president,
Charlie Turner was appointed
the United States attorney
and asked me to serve
as his criminal division chief,
which I was honored to do.
So when the Immigration Service
returned to us in sometime in 1983,
the case was there, the evidence wasn't.
And Charlie and I picked up
the pace substantially.
The two of us did nothing
but work on this case for about two years.
These people were basically amoral people
who could not or would not conform
to the laws of our society.
But anytime you find people
that are unwilling or unable
to conform to the mores of society,
you find a person
who is a potential criminal.
[Niren]
Turner knew,
"Unless I prosecute it, he stays,
so I'm going to dig as much as I can."
If you take three giant steps backwards
and contemplate the fact
that one of the most discussed topics
of the philosophy
of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
was his view that marriage
is a worthless institution,
that it interferes with the freedom
that you need to achieve
spiritual enlightenment.
And suddenly you see so many Sannyasins
on the ranch getting married.
You know, conspiracy
is a federal prosecutor's best friend.
The conspiracy was an agreement
to defraud the United States.
So the typical case would be this:
Swami Prem Robert, an American citizen,
would be ordered to go to Houston, Texas.
Ma Hanna, a foreign Sannyasin,
would be ordered to go to Houston, Texas.
And the two of them would be instructed
to go back
to their original non-Sannyasin names.
They would each get jobs.
They would get an apartment together.
They would establish what ostensibly
looked like a committed life together.
They would go to city hall.
They would get a marriage license.
A few weeks later,
go to the Immigration Service and say,
"We are in a committed relationship,
and under the immigration laws
we would like a green card."
A green card would issue. Zoom!
Both parties make a hasty retreat
back to the ranch
and return to their original lives
and original partners that they had.
And this was done in Dallas,
Southern California,
Seattle,
Trenton, New Jersey, and in Philadelphia,
all around the United States
so that the pattern was harder to detect.
This was the largest immigration fraud
case in the history of the United States.
And Charlie and I,
as we pursued the case
the conclusion was unavoidable
that Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh himself
was involved in the planning
and execution of this.
By that time, I think it was
the safe assumption on everyone's part,
including the Rajneeshees,
that if he was charged and deported,
Rajneeshpuram would disappear
off the face of the earth.
[Jane] About this time when one was called
into Sheela's room in Jesus Grove,
a list was being made
of enemies of the commune.
People were talking
about killing other people.
Sheela considered Mr. Turner
a real enemy of the commune.
Mr. Turner had the last say
when it came to whether or not Bhagwan
could stay in America.
When there was talk of shooting people,
Sheela had said,
"Shanti B will do it. She's a good shot."
It was just put out there that,
"Okay, I'm the good shot. I'll do that."
Sheela told me I was to go to Portland
and meet up with a woman there.
And when I met her, she was a Sannyasin,
but wearing regular street clothes.
And she took me with her
to an apartment in Portland
which she told me was a safe house.
In the apartment, the cupboards
were full of regular street clothes,
and she told me to choose
from these clothes something to wear.
Somebody came to us and told us what kind
of guns he thought we should get.
He said we should get smaller guns.
Pistols because they
would be easier to transport.
The small group in the car I was in
drove to where Mr. Turner worked.
And we sat in McDonald's,
early in the morning.
Drank coffee. For the first time
in my life I smoked a cigarette.
But we were watching
the park house entrance
where Mr. Turner was expected to walk out.
And at that point my companion said to me,
"Come on. We'll go down
and we'll show you where he comes out."
And pointed out where
Mr. Turner parked his car.
I was saying to myself,
"What are we doing?
This is absolutely crazy. This is like
We're in the middle of town.
And we're gonna kill somebody here?"
No, he didn't come out that day,
so I didn't ever see him.
And as we drove away
back towards the main road,
the three people in the car,
including myself,
talked about the possibility of perhaps
shooting him there in the park house.
[Zaitz] I've been a journalist
all of my life.
I did my first newspaper
when I was in the third grade,
and I've done it ever since,
for 50 years in the state of Oregon.
I feel I was born
to be an investigative reporter.
I just have a knack for it.
I have an inclination. I can find stories.
The best ones are those
that I sort of have an instinct for it
that something isn't right here
and I'm going to dig into it
and I'm going to find out why.
We came into it when the controversy
between the Rajneeshee community
and Oregon was ramping up considerably.
There were political tensions,
religious tensions, civil rights tensions.
The influx of people, the influx of money
was continuing to grow.
So the question loomed pretty large
for us, suddenly, is who were they?
Where did they come from?
Why are they in Oregon?
And what's really going on here?
I got assigned to go to India
because they came from India
and they left for a reason.
I collected, like,
35,000 pages of material
and established the history
of the organization.
It became quite clear
that the commune had fled India
ahead of getting indicted
and arrested by Indian authorities.
They were facing immigration fraud
tax issues at several government levels
the smuggling in currency, in gold
arsons, sophisticated criminal conduct.
I spent 18 months writing
what became a 20-part series,
which to this day remains the longest
series ever published by The Oregonian.
I went down to the ranch, to city hall,
and we asked to see every check
that the city had issued.
It was a spider web of financial contacts.
The Oregon operation
had an insatiable need for cash,
to create this illusion
of great prosperity,
that we're building nirvana in the desert.
Well, that took money.
I think it became very apparent that this
was no longer a sustainable fantasy.
[man]
You came from where?
The honeymoon is over at Rajneeshpuram
between the followers of the Bhagwan
and many of the street people
they invited there.
The street people claim that yesterday
Ma Anand Sheela called
the entire street people population
into this large assembly hall
and held a trial of sorts.
[Sheela]
So, what I would like you to understand
that I'm not going
to tolerate problem-makers,
any sort of hanky-panky from today on.
Tomorrow morning you will start receiving
messages that you need to leave,
you need to leave.
She says, "You. You're on the bus."
And the man is immediately escorted out
and held under tight security
while he packs his things and leaves.
I saw five or six guys just completely,
you know,
like, physically being dragged out,
you know, by the security guards.
[Gary] I got a call around midnight
from the governor's office
telling me that Rajneeshees
were driving around The Dalles in vans
and dropping homeless people off
in neighborhoods
and if anybody encountered them
and asked what they were doing,
they were pointing automatic weapons
at them and making them back away.
And she said, "What should we do?"
To this day, that's probably still
the most unusual and difficult request
for legal advice that I've gotten
from a client.
Up until now,
most of the folks who've left the ranch
have left of their own accord.
But this latest batch seems
to represent something new.
Rajneeshees are booting people out
wholesale, and they're getting physical.
There were people on the streets
that came to our place
that were not in their full capacity,
that really required major medication.
There were people who were violent.
There were people who were
really living on the edge of psychosis.
[female reporter]
Rajneesh officials today said
the four men who were dropped off
in Portland are troublemakers.
They call us troublemakers, yes,
and we have openly admitted
that we did act out of anger.
We were going to tip
their, uh, ticket booth over
and start tipping all their A-frames over
right down the line.
They couldn't control
those independent street people
[chuckles]
even with tranquilizers.
[chuckles]
They couldn't do it.
Well, I wanted to check it out.
And the guy that we're worshipping,
he looks like a damn devil.
[male reporter]
What would you tell another young person?
Not to come
unless you want to be a queer.
'Cause there's all kind of queers,
I seen it myself.
They were kissing and hugging,
and the lesbians too.
Men are sleeping in this room here
on the floor, on benches, on the chairs,
wherever they can find a space.
They all came from Rajneeshpuram
and now they're all stranded
in the city of Portland.
And then they ended up
in towns in central Oregon.
Some of them then later in Portland,
where they begged or stole
what they needed to survive.
So, it created enormous tension
inside the community
and outside the community.
Some residents of Madras, Oregon
say they fear for their safety tonight
as disillusioned street people
continue to leave Rajneeshpuram.
The residents of that town
are being advised by the mayor
to lock their doors to protect themselves
against homeless people
who might leave nearby Rajneeshpuram.
Some people had reached
the point of hysteria,
being afraid to go out
of the house, you know?
The people in Madras
are fearing for their lives.
They are afraid that they will show up,
and some might maybe even
slaughter them in their beds.
[female reporter] People of Madras, Oregon
have thrown up their hands.
They don't know what to do with
the rejected recruits from Rajneeshpuram
who have converged on their town.
[man] The rejects that they don't want,
dump them in here on us?
Just send them back where they come from.
We're not obligated
to take care of their rejects.
[man]
We don't want them here.
Now what's gonna happen
if they dump them here in town
and they don't have any money?
You tell me.
I think it's time
that somebody does something.
The release of the homeless people
and how that was done,
it was pretty obvious
that things were sort of boiling up
and coming to a head here
with this election process.
I'm scared just like the rest of us
around here, you know?
We're just, uh, worried,
and we won't know until the sixth,
I guess, how this is gonna come out.
You know, you can only push so far.
Wasco County was looking for a fight.
Last night a large group
of angry Oregonians gathered
to map out anti-Rajneesh strategy.
Although they'd been warned against it,
many in the group vowed to follow through
with a plan to register illegally
to vote against the Rajneeshees.
[female reporter] The plan,
organized by Albany resident JoAnne Boies,
is to register
the day before the election,
vote, and leave the next day.
Let me tell you,
if you don't get off your duffs,
you're gonna be wearing a picture
of the Bhagwan around your neck.
[cheering and applause]
We don't want them
taking over the state of Oregon
or any other state in the United States.
This is our country.
[female anchor] The controversy in Wasco
County has made some national headlines
concerning whether or not the Rajneeshees
would actually go to the poll.
A record voter turnout is expected there.
[male reporter] Voters were turning out
at a record pace at Wasco County polls.
Lines began forming when the polls opened
at 8 a.m., and they never let up.
[woman] Never had
anything like this before.
May have this crowd
maybe six, seven o'clock at night,
but not like this in the morning.
[Durow]
It was a big number.
I think it showed
they were paying attention to the news.
They understood what was at stake,
and they came out and voted
to protect their own democracy.
Sheela's been saying all the time
what they're going to do.
You know, and that's That's dirty pool.
The people don't want the red shirts
to take us over, I guess. [chuckles]
[male reporter]
How important is this election?
Very important.
Um
We need the votes for our side.
The Rajneeshees were way under
what they needed to do a block vote
and get their own people
into the county commission.
The problem was that Wasco County
was a little bigger
than the Rajneeshees could control
just by sheer numbers.
And it fell apart before the election.
November sixth means different things
for different people,
but today at Rajneeshpuram, its meaning
is being translated into protest.
-the Constitution!
-[crowd] Yeah!
-Telling us we can't vote!
-[cheering]
[male reporter] Voters at Rajneeshpuram
were greeted by demonstrators
protesting because they cannot enter
the voting booth.
What people told me
was they think this process stinks.
Anybody feel that way?
[cheering and applause]
And this is democracy.
Well, I've had enough of it.
[cheering and applause]
[male reporter] Sheela dropped by
to view the proceedings.
She said even if she could vote,
she would not.
It was misuse of power
and it was misuse of power
against their own citizens.
Against Americans.
Against American war veterans.
This ugly mentality,
I have no words for.
Anti-climactic best describes
Wasco County's election.
Fears that Rajneeshees would cast
enough ballots to take over the county
proved all for naught.
Well, although that Rajneeshee takeover
threat never really got off the ground,
it did spur a record voter turnout.
Ninety-three percent turnout.
That is really something.
[male reporter]
Pretty amazing and the county clerk
was very happy about that.
Frankly, everyone in Wasco County is also
happy that the Rajneeshees did not vote.
We did it, we did it correctly,
we did it legally, we did it properly,
and the integrity of the ballot
has been preserved.
[female reporter]
Officials here share a sigh of relief
and a sense of pride
in a community that stood together
facing one of the greatest challenges
to the democratic process
any county in the country
has had to endure.
Well, in Sheela's case, um
she did not take losing lightly.
She did not leave her guns at the door.
She wasn't calm for very long.
She got militant pretty darn fast.
If they want to demolish us,
they can throw a bomb on us.
We'll be happily ready to die.
But to become victim
of fascist government,
that's not Rajneeshee way.
It's like Hitler's troops are waiting
to massacre the Allies.
As things began to unravel,
there was a great risk that it
could boil over into actual violence.
Oregonians.
It's a rare breed.
[laughs] That's the only thing I can say.
It's a rare breed.
[male reporter] Next thing they want
to know is what do you mean by that?
What do I mean by that?
They haven't learned their lesson yet.
By 1984, this whole thing was on fire.
I mean, on fire.
I'm sound asleep and the phone rang
in the middle of a deep sleep.
And it was my secretary
who had been called and said that,
"You gotta come down
to the planning office.
There's been a fire."
Sure enough, there was a fire.
[chuckles]
What they did was two or three broke in
and almost every file was pulled
out of its drawer and thrown around
and they cut the candles off and squirted
everything with the lighter fluid.
Once it caught fire, everything
on the wall, it was all blistered.
One day everybody got a box of chocolates.
A box of chocolates arrives.
[man]
Dark Secrets.
Outside, they look just like
ordinary chocolates, but inside
And it says, "Thank you for your support
to preserve the Columbia River Gorge."
So we open the box
and we start eating them.
A day or two later, Bob's riding
in the elevator and he sees Bowen Blair,
director of Friends of the Columbia Gorge,
and says,
"Bowen, thank you
for the chocolates you sent us."
And Bowen says, "I'm not aware
that we sent you any chocolate."
They found one candy
in the center of the box
with a pinprick in the bottom of it, uh
that was loaded with something fun.
Mike Sullivan,
the district attorney in Jefferson County,
almost died, and nobody knew why.
My skin was starting
to turn different shades of colors
and my lips turned blue
because of a lack of oxygen.
[Durow]
Bill Hulse traveled to the ranch,
and at some point
they offered him some water.
Having drunk that water,
I came down with a violent, uh
stomach bowel upset.
[Durow]
He became violently ill.
We almost lost Bill.
And it was It was touch and go.
People feared for their lives
and there was a reason for that.
We in the U.S. Attorney's office
were concerned about our safety.
Two state police detectives showed up
and they took me into one
of our small interview rooms,
and they proceeded to explain to me
that they had developed
credible information
that I had been targeted for murder.
These folks were so diabolical
that they would consider killing me
for doing my job.
The Rajneeshee rumor hotline has been
operating only since yesterday afternoon,
but already it has received
up to 3,000 phone calls
from citizens worried about
the Rajneeshees.
State police.
Oh, sure. I can answer that.
The challenge was to sift through
what's real and what's not,
because some of the things that we
were hearing were just fantastical.
A very strange story continues to unfold
at the Oregon commune of Rajneeshpuram.
[male reporter] There's a new accusation
against Sheela and her gang,
and it was a plot to blow up
the Wasco County courthouse.
[male reporter] An Air Rajneesh pilot
says he refused a demand from Sheela
to bomb a nearby courthouse.
People prefer to believe the rumors.
People prefer
not to be confused by the facts.
And as long as that's the case, we
will have possible violence because of it.
[male reporter] One rumor claimed
the Rajneeshees
caused the recent salmonella outbreak.
Other callers worried
about weapons in Rajneeshpuram.
The hotline says
it knows of nothing illegal.
The threat comes not from Rajneeshpuram
and Rajneeshees.
The threat of violence comes
from these people and people like them.
People who are bigoted.
And for this court to allow itself to be
degraded in this way is disgusting.
The state of Oregon is dead.
[Gary] We had no doubt
that Sheela and her crew
were were very deeply involved.
It's hard to believe
that anybody would do that.
And yet in retrospect, we now know
that much of what we were hearing
was true.
[Niren] We were in the middle
of the battle, but we weren't winning.
Sheela intended to beat the state
and she didn't.
She was deteriorating
in a way that you could see visibly.
I think the fear
and the anxiety and the tension
I think it wore her thin,
but we didn't know how thin
she had been worn.
And not just parents who are retarded,
teachers Uh, students
I saw more paranoia, and not just paranoia
from the people outside.
Now it was moving inside.
[Jane]
There had always been some tension
between Sheela
and the people in Bhagwan's house.
Sheela did not like
Bhagwan's personal physician,
and Hasya married Deva Raj,
Bhagwan's doctor.
I do know that a problem
between her and myself began
shortly after I married Deva Raj.
Something changed,
very shortly after my marriage.
[Jane] So, Hasya had even more access
to Bhagwan than Sheela did.
For Sheela, this was the last straw.
She realized that she had lost the battle.
And in the middle of all this,
unknown to Bhagwan,
she had his room wiretapped
in order to protect him.
Sheela would be aware
of any possible danger to Bhagwan.
I felt she wanted to hear and control
what was being said to Bhagwan.
And we had a tower around his house.
This was where the recordings were made.
I would be up there
and K.D. would climb up
and take out a cassette out
of the recorder and put in another one.
And then this cassette would be taken down
and somebody would sit and listen to it
and report to Sheela what was being said.
[Jane]
Sheela played a tape to me
that was more shocking
than anything I could have imagined.
Bhagwan was asking his doctor
how death could be induced
in a dignified, painless way.
Bhagwan's doctor explained to him,
first morphine would be injected
into the blood vessel.
quinone would be added
that would paralyze the body
and then a third substance
would be added to stop the heart.
On the wiretap,
Bhagwan's doctor said to him
that the medications had arrived
and Bhagwan told the doctor to bury them
in a safe place in the garden
until they were needed.
Bhagwan ordered Sheela to arrange
for the building of a crematorium.
He also told Sheela that he would die
on a Master's Day, the sixth of July.
It was too awful to contemplate.
I didn't know what it meant.
It frightened me terribly.
But it was just awful.
From that day on, I listened to Sheela
when she talked
about the dangers to Bhagwan
of his doctor and his dentist.
We complain about not to use
rats and rabbits
for medical experiment.
And they take this intellectual giant
for this stupid experiment.
How stupid they can be.
They have no ethics.
They have no ethics in medical field.
They have no human ethics.
And definitely, they don't know
the relationship of guru and disciple.
[Jane]
On the eve of Master's Day,
July the sixth, 1985
Sheela called a group of us to her house.
Sheela looked terrible that evening.
She was really pale.
And she told us,
"Tomorrow Bhagwan is going
to orchestrate his death.
Tomorrow Deva Raj is going to kill him.
We've got to stop it.
We have to do something.
If we can stop Deva Raj,
if we can kill Deva Raj,
Bhagwan won't die.
Who will do it?"
Nobody spoke.
We were all in shocked silence.
It was impossible. It was just
impossible that Bhagwan should die.
But when somebody spoke
and said, "I will do it,"
that was me. That was my voice
that rose up in that silence
and said, "I will do it."
And then there was
just general pandemonium.
People were all talking at once,
but I had retreated into myself.
I wasn't really listening.
I didn't really hear what they said.
And after, when everybody had gone,
I went by myself, completely alone.
I went to Sheela's nurse.
She gave me what I would need.
A syringe, the substance.
I went to the clothing room
and chose the clothes I would wear
so that I had a pocket
to put the syringe in.
It was all about
keeping Bhagwan alive.
Bhagwan must live.
[Jane] When I dressed that morning to go,
I was
I was not afraid.
I felt very strong
and very clear in what I was doing.
I went to the festival.
I felt like a medieval knight.
I felt like Joan of Arc
who was going into battle.
I sat close behind the doctor.
The festivities took their known pattern.
There was enormous noise, music, dancing.
[cheering]
And as Bhagwan stood up to leave,
and everybody cheered
and waved their hands
in absolute ecstasy and joy
I approached Deva Raj
and said something into his ear.
And as he leaned towards me,
I pushed the syringe.
He instantly grabbed behind him,
grabbed my hand with the syringe in it,
and there was a bit of a struggle,
but I got it out again and threw it away.
The woman who had arranged to pick it up,
picked it up.
I behaved to Deva Raj
as though nothing had happened.
I looked at him quizzically,
"What's wrong with you?
What are you What's the problem?"
He stood up, staggered, walked backwards.
I followed him.
"What's wrong with you?
What's the problem?
What is What's the problem?"
And as he staggered away from me
I turned and walked away.
I walked through the crowd.
I walked out the other side.
And I walked
back to Jesus Grove where I lived.
Completely alone.
Nobody spoke to me and I spoke to nobody.
And I wanted to be alone.
There was the part of me who felt
I had saved Bhagwan's life.
I had done what I had to do.
But deep inside of me, I was shattered.
I had grown up clearly understanding
that thou shalt not kill.
And now I had tried to kill somebody.
What had happened?
I knew I had gone beyond the pale.
I knew I had stepped over the line.
And on that day,
I also knew I had to leave.
[Sheela] When you see
some photos of me in last months,
I was worn out.
I was totally heartbroken.
Every night, my mother would come.
She sits on my bed
and pours tears,
"If you will continue like this
you will die soon."
I can still see my mother's pain.
This was
the straw that broke camel's back.
Two days after, I left Rajneeshpuram.
Those last two days
they were full of pain.
To leave Bhagwan
a man I thought was unsep
Unseparable from me.
I'm taking the decision to leave.
I'm taking decision to leave
from all these beautiful people
who love me.
I knew I would be excommunicated.
But I'm leaving.
I had learned from Bhagwan,
burn your bridges.
Go forward.
Sheela and her closest associates took off
in broad daylight aboard this airplane,
leaving Rajneeshees to wonder
what other secrets they left behind.
Sheela was looking very serious.
And I looked around
I didn't know what was happening.
I said, "What's happening?"
And Sheela looked at me
and she said, "I'm leaving."
And in that minute, it just came.
I said, "If you're leaving,
I'm leaving too."
Thirteenth of September, 1985
was my personal independence day.
That was the day I left Bhagwan.
The main people
who work with me day and night,
they left with me.
Their loyalty to Bhagwan,
they had transferred it to me
because they saw genuine loyalty in me.
[male reporter]
The pilot who flew them out says
they left with 20 pieces of luggage.
About 100 Rajneeshees
gathered here to see them off.
Once in the air, the former president
of the commune was heard to say,
"At least we left like queens."
[Niren] When I came to work, somebody
told me that Sheela had left the ranch
and a bunch of her people
had gone with her.
And I
I thought that
I mean, I was just I was
aghast Not
I I was just in shock that Sheela
would just up and leave overnight.
[female reporter]
The commune is rocked by news
that Bhagwan's fiery personal secretary,
Ma Anand Sheela,
has left Rajneeshpuram with group leaders.
[Jane] But once my daughter
and I were on the plane
and the break had been really made,
I was overwhelmed.
I had left the master.
This is impossible.
We were flying away.
We were flying to a new life
and we didn't know what it was.
Time had come.
I had to go on my own.
I had to figure out life for myself.
And after I left Bhagwan,
we never cross each other's path again.
The person who was Sheela's secretary
called Lao Tzu house
and made an appointment to speak to Osho
and went up and spoke to Osho
and told him what was going on.
And he was not happy. He was
[chuckles] He was
He had vengeance.
He was going to prosecute.
He was interested in getting her.
He wanted her caught.
And within 24 hours of a lot
of that information coming to him,
he came out and spoke.
I fully expected the shit to hit the fan.
The leader of the sect
is Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.
He has been something of a mystery
to say the least.
He has not spoken publicly in four years,
but now, for reasons
that are not entirely clear to us,
he has finally broken his silence.
And there's more going on at the ranch.
The Bhagwan silence is over.
News 8 learned this afternoon
that just two hours from now
the Bhagwan will begin speaking
to Rajneeshee faithful.
[woman] We're gonna be having
a press conference this evening.
And it's going to be with Bhagwan.
We're just announcing it to the press
in case they want to come.
[Bhagwan] I have been silent
for three and a half years.
The people who were in power
took advantage of my silence.
Sheela and her group,
they tried to kill three people.
They have attempted
to murder people in the commune.
They have attempted
to murder people in The Dalles.
They have attempted
bugging people's houses.
My own house.
These people are absolutely criminals.
Inhuman.
Brutal.
Fascist in their outlook.
On a different level,
the news out of Rajneeshpuram
is getting more bizarre every day.
[male reporter] The number one source
of new rumors is Bhagwan himself.
Just about every appearance,
there's a new accusation.
A palace coup,
alleged theft of millions of dollars.
The whereabouts of Ma Anand Sheela
are still a mystery tonight.
According to Bhagwan,
it was all the work of Sheela
and what he calls her gang of fascists.
She should have been here and faced me.
She did not even come
to say goodbye to me.
People who don't commit crime
don't escape like that.
How long you can hide?
And if the police
is not going to take the action
then my people will take the action.
[cheering and applause]