Des Moines, USA - Members of a New Mexico doomsday cult who seemed friendly and industrious appear increasingly withdrawn from the outside world, neighbors say.
The group founded Strong City in northeastern New Mexico ranch country near the Colorado border and 30 miles from the small town of Des Moines, in 2000 and its members, estimated at 50 to 70, seemed to fit in. Neighbors said they were well liked and many of them went to work in the area.
But, about a year ago, the Albuquerque Journal said, the inhabitants of Strong City began dropping out of sight, quitting their jobs, ignoring care of their land and disconnecting telephones.
Events took a different turn last week when child welfare workers removed three children from the compound.
Apparently at the core of the problem, the Journal report said, was the group's leader,self-professed Messiah Wayne C. Bent, who had talked on the group's Web site about being with "virgins that laid upon my bed, naked" but emphatically denied having sex with them.
Bent, 66, who predicted the end of the world last October, called the state's removal last week of three children from the compound "kidnapping" and lashed out at state officials and the media.