Columbus, USA - A prosecutor described Tuesday how she and other investigators stood in a Kirtland barn on a cold January night in 1990 and prayed that the tipster who had told them they would find the buried bodies of two adults and three children was wrong.
"We waited - hours - and we dug in that barn, and we hoped he was wrong, and we prayed he was wrong," Karen Kowall, an assistant Lake County prosecutor, told members of the Ohio Parole Board. "And he wasn't wrong."
Investigators unearthed the bodies of five members of a little-known religious cult on that Jan. 4 night - Dennis and Cheryl Avery and their daughters, Trina, 15, Becky, 13, and Karen, 7. Each had been bound with duct tape and shot with a .45-caliber revolver.
The April 17, 1989, murders landed Kirtland cult leader Jeffrey Lundgren on death row, where he has spent the last 16 years. Barring a grant of clemency from Gov. Bob Taft based on a parole board recommendation of mercy, Lundgren, 56, has less than four weeks to live. His execution is set for Oct. 24.
Kowall riveted the board with a surgical presentation on Lundgren's rise from petty criminal to mass murderer, ridiculing claims by Lundgren's lawyer, Henry Hilow, that Lundgren's life philosophy has changed on death row "from an unbending steel sword to one of love."
Kowall also assailed Lundgren's claims that he murdered the Averys because of a "misinterpretation of scripture" that resulted in a "deific decree" - an order from God to kill the family.
"The Averys were not targeted because God commanded Jeff Lundgren to kill them," Kowall said. "The Averys were targeted by Jeff Lundgren because he didn't like them. He perceived them as a threat to him, and he used their deaths to solidify this group's commitment to him. He has no remorse for that."
Instead, she said, Lundgren is merely a vulgar, debauched criminal who killed, stole from his church, committed adultery and commanded female disciples to "dance naked in the wilderness" for him to "cleanse themselves" after the murders.
Hilow disputed her assertions, saying Lundgren anguishes over what parole board member Peter Davis described as "the multiple layers of horror" of his crime.
"He believed in judgment," Hilow said, referring to Lundgren's philosophy after he broke away from the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. "It was a philosophy that showed no love, and it was a philosophy that believed in retribution."
Referring to an interview Lundgren did last week with parole board member Kathleen Kovach, Hilow quoted Lundgren as saying: "I'm a failure to those people. I anguish over that. I should have saved the people and not sacrificed them. I am a wretched man."
The only family member to testify was Renee Webster, Cheryl Avery's niece.
Gently sobbing, she read letters from other family members, including Donald Bailey, Cheryl Avery's half-brother.
"The memories of his victims and the welfare of society and the demands of justice all dictate this final act of cleansing,' " Webster read from Bailey's letter." My only regret is he has but one life to give.' "
The board will send its recommendation to Taft on Monday.