SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- What could have drawn four apparently well-grounded women into a cult of personality charged with starving an infant boy to death and grossly neglecting 12 other children fathered by the family patriarch? Little is known of their secretive lives, but details emerging since last week's arrests ring familiar to cult experts, including one who interviewed a woman who fled
Winnfred Wright and his decidedly untraditional family after her daughter died inexplicably in 1990. The dynamics appear to be there: a charismatic but domineering figurehead, submissive followers and bizarre behavior that, despite the group's obsession with secrecy, prompted neighbors to call police out of concern for the children.
Authorities arrested Wright, 45, with the women -- Carol Bremner, 44, Deirdre Wilson, 37, Kali Polk-Matthews, 20 and Mary Campbell, 37, the mother of the 19-month-old boy who died in mid November. They are accused of turning a three-bedroom house in a Marin County suburb into a virtual stockade where their 13 children suffered terribly. Many of the children had rickets, a softened-bone condition rare because it can be prevented by a normal diet and routine exposure to sunlight. But neighbors said they never saw the kids, who didn't attend school. Several of the women worked to support the family, but either cut ties with relatives or convinced them they were part of a blissful community.
All are common features of cults, from David Koresh's Branch Davidians to "The Body," a sect in an Attleboro, Mass. where three members are charged with starving a child to death. A ban on outside influence is a logical step, says Rick Ross, a well-known cult expert. If Wright's children attended school, a teacher might have investigated their frail health, and they would have been exposed to ideas outside the group's control. Ross hadn't heard of reports about Wright's family. But Margaret Thaler Singer became familiar with Wright after San Francisco Police asked her to interview a woman who lived with him more than 10 years ago.
Wright was already keeping at least three other women in his home at the time, through a mixture of charm and psychological coercion, Singer said. She said Wright "terrified" the woman, who broke from his orbit following the mysterious death of their 2-month-old daughter. Wright didn't preach any cohesive religion, Singer said. His personality was the draw, along with his ideas about race.
A black man, he persuaded the white women to serve him "physically, financially, sexually" to atone for past transgressions white men in America had committed against black men, according to Singer. The women shared more than Wright. Friends and family have described each as trusting and altruistic -- one was an anti-apartheid activist at the University of California, Berkeley.
They were also well educated or reared in established families -- one attended an exclusive San Francisco high school, a third was the granddaughter of Xerox Corp.'s founder.
"People don't have all those strong of foundations we think they do," Singer said. "And education is no vaccination against getting conned." Another expert said it's a mistake to think cults prey on the weak.
"A common misconception is that people who get involved are stupid, or couldn't do anything else in their lives," said Steven Hassan, who has written several books on cults. "It's usually the very talented, ambitious do-gooder types that make good workers."
Wright eventually moved with several of the women from San Francisco to the Marin County town of Lucas Valley, where the toddler's malnutrition death prompted social workers to put the 12 remaining children in emergency foster care.
Citing a judge's orders, Marin prosecutors and police won't release more details from their three-month investigation, which prompted a grand jury to charge Wright and three of the four women with second-degree murder, manslaughter and child neglect last week. Polk-Matthews, who has not had children, faces just manslaughter and neglect charges. None of the five have cooperated, police said, so it took DNA tests to show Wright fathered the eight boys and five girls.
Authorities said Wright is unemployed and two of the women had jobs that apparently supported the large group. Campbell and Wilson are also pregnant again. The five appeared in court Wednesday but will not enter pleas until Feb. 21.
Bremner's lawyer said she led a normal life and the group was secretive precisely because they knew outsiders would frown on their relationships.
"She got up, she went to work. She came home, she took care of the kids," attorney Jack Rauch said. "They just remained private because, obviously, it was a group that drew attention if they went out."
He also said the kids had rickets because of a strict vegetarian diet.
Campbell's brother, who lives in New York City but visited the family in Marin, said authorities have it all wrong.
"You saw a lot of happiness," Anthony Campbell told the Marin Independent Journal of his visit.
The clues available from a smattering of public statements, as well as old police and coroner's reports from Wright's years in San Francisco, paint a grimmer picture. Police arrested Wright in 1993 after a next-door neighbor called, fearing child neglect. Officers found no obvious signs of abuse or malnutrition, but after they left, Wright threatened to kill the neighbor, according to police reports. The charges were eventually dropped. In the early 1990s, three women complained to police about the group. They said they were lured there by one of the women living with Wright with promises to be photographed for a mural depicting 90 different women, The San Francisco Chronicle reported Thursday.
Once there, the women told police there were Bible readings and offers to have astrological charts read, as well as offers of drugs and pressure to have sex, the newspaper reported. San Francisco authorities also investigated the family in 1990, after the death of the girl whose mother Singer eventually debriefed. A coroner's report said there were no outward signs of bodily injury and no charges were filed.
Apparently undeterred, Wright continued recruiting women.
"People see how some of these big cults recruit all over the world," Singer says. "They say, 'Oh, I can go do that.' And they do."