CHAPTER 2

In To Me See

Various people in the Helzer family and their friends would go through Impact, or a similar program like it, at different times in the 1990s. Carma Helzer was the first of her immediate family to attend, followed by Gerry, Justin, Heather and Taylor. Some of the most telling statements about Impact would come later from Charney Hoffman and others.

Charney Hoffman said, “The staffers at Impact basically enforced the group. You go, and if you protest something that’s happening, you have a bunch of staffers that come up and try to help you get with the program. They all work with the facilitator who is extremely totalitarian. Very authoritarian.

“All in all, the staffers do the facilitator’s bidding. If anybody doesn’t look like they’re getting with the program, they teach that person to hate themselves until they learn to love themselves. Impact was very emotionally manipulative. I know a lot of people who snapped because of going through it.”

Jill Tingey, Carma’s cousin, said of her experience in Impact, “The thing that I remember that I didn’t like—it was very abrasive. I think the philosophy was to break down the old beliefs or things that don’t work, and rebuild. But that breakdown was abrasive and it seemed like abuse to me. I’m not a shy person, but I kind of crawled inside myself, and I didn’t want that to happen to me. I didn’t want any of them tearing on me. There were a lot of good things—individualization and thinking deeply. But some of it was really in your face.”

A friend of Carma Helzer’s named Jeanette Carter was introduced to a program like Impact called Harmony. She said later, “It was all about overcoming obstacles in one’s life. Places where people were stuck. It broke down the barriers.

“It was a positive way of communicating with my children. I was often angry at my kids. I wanted to be like Carma. It cost two hundred eighty dollars for the first level, which was called Quest. Quest stood for who you really were in life. It was a way to find the center of your life. The first level was four consecutive days and started at six A.M. on a Wednesday and went all day.

“Quest was led by a man named Dion. Dion asked everybody questions about their lives. This happened in front of a dozen other people. Dion was the facilitator. He challenged you. It was very intense. People were crying and getting sick. Dion was professional and authoritative. His voice was commanding.

“I hated the first two days. Then I started to feel differently on the third day. It was more loving, but still tough. I started to feel a difference in myself. It changed me.”

Carter did admit that some people hated Harmony all the way through the course. One particular instance was brutal. Carter said, “You play a game and pretend you are on a ship with other people and it was going to sink. You pleaded for your life. You told them why you wanted to be saved. Only three people could be saved in a lifeboat. Everybody had three Popsicle sticks. You gave some to the people you wanted to save. Most people kept one Popsicle stick for themselves.”

Even though Carter could have saved a Popsicle stick for herself, she gave all of hers away. In essence, she drowned while saving others. It is not recorded if Taylor and Justin tried to save themselves in the game of lifeboat. One thing is certain, Taylor loved the idea of certainty and dynamic forcefulness that the facilitator had. He wanted to become a facilitator himself one day. One of the most prevalent ideas of Impact and Harmony was that there was no right or wrong—just what works. “Right” and “wrong” were supposedly belief systems that often retarded a person’s self-awareness. Both Impact and Harmony stressed the dynamics of self, not groups or social interaction. This only reinforced Taylor’s already considerable vision of himself as a leader who had an important message for others around him.

One thing Charney Hoffman did notice about Taylor as things disintegrated in his marriage, “He seemed more interested than ever in showing people how the Latter-Day Saints had deviated from the path that was previously held. Taylor was very zealous to point out differences between what the church had taught in the early days with what the church had been teaching in more recent times.

“I remember pointing out that several people within the church disagreed with his interpretation of things, his perspective. He said in so many words that he no longer cared what the leaders of the church said. His reason was because they simply had parted from the path originally set forth by the founders of the church. When I started to disagree with him, he seemed to become very upset if I didn’t see things the way he did.”

Taylor was disappointed with the way things had turned out with Ann as well. He began to believe that the Latter-Day Saints Church had lied to him. He believed he had followed all their rules and still was not happy in his job, his marriage or his life. It didn’t dawn on him that he might be wrong in his appreciation of their doctrine. Instead, they must be wrong and it was his purpose in life to bring them back to the way the founders had anticipated that they go. Everyone always said he had drive, charisma, charm and a dynamic personality. He was just about to prove that with an impressionable young woman who had moved to the area from southern California.

 

 

Keri Furman was one of those girls who was a beauty from the day she was born, in 1976. Keri, however, grew up in a troubled home in southern California. She later said of her childhood, “I was a latchkey kid. When I was eleven, I cooked for myself and cleaned the house for my dad, who worked two jobs to support my brother and me.”

Keri’s mother had left the family when Keri was young. It forced her to grow up with a very independent streak. She also indicated that the person she was growing up with was not her real father, but rather a stepfather. She said later, “I was naive when I was young. I grew up very badly with a stepfamily.” Anxious to get out of the house, she graduated early and was on her own by the age of seventeen.

To support herself, Keri began selling perfume in southern California. Looking for a change of scene, she moved north to the Bay Area, selling perfume and working in a veterinarian’s office. She said later that she was in a bad relationship with a man older than herself. She indicated that it was an abusive relationship. She recalled, “I didn’t know how to show my feelings then.”

In 1998, Keri began working as a waitress at the Peppermill Restaurant in Concord. One evening, a tall, handsome young man sat down and she served him. He was Taylor Helzer. Keri thought he looked adorable. They began chatting and really hit it off.

After the meal was over, instead of leaving a tip, he left his credit card on the table and told her to buy something nice with it. She was blown away by the gesture. No one had ever done anything like that for her.

Keri said later, “He was different. Enticing. I wanted to know more about him. I didn’t use the credit card, but I called his number from a business card he left. He came into the restaurant again the very next night.

“He was exciting. Very straightforward. He would say what was on his mind. He was loving and kind. It felt good being around him.”

Taylor and Keri developed a relationship, even though he was still married to Ann. Keri eventually moved into an apartment on Victory Lane with Taylor. A man named Tyler Bergland lived nearby and met Taylor on the apartment grounds. Bergland said, “He was very charismatic. Very open. He could get people to open up. He could get you to explore things in different ways.”

After the apartment on Victory Lane, Taylor and Keri rented a house, along with Justin and housemates Olivia Embry and Brandon Davids, on Oak Grove. Within this house, they were free to do as they pleased, which over time became free to do as Taylor pleased.

By this time, the Mormon Church was not a big factor in Taylor’s life and Keri only went there once with him. She said of the experience, “I really didn’t care about it. I was in a youth group when I attended a Christian church when I was younger. Being a Mormon wasn’t for me.”

Of that early period with Taylor, Keri recalled, “He gave me more confidence. In the beginning, he was very loving. He would hug me for half an hour. ‘Why are you so free?’ I would wonder. I wanted to be a better person. He made a lot of people feel that way. It was special just to know him.

“He made me feel pretty. And I had been in an abusive relationship before Taylor with a different boyfriend.”

Keri said of Justin, “He was sweet and kind. He had a loving environment with his brother. I didn’t grow up in a happy home. They gave each other hugs, though Taylor was domineering. I saw them fight only once. It was a wrestling match in the front yard. It was like boys wrestling.”

Keri may have thought of the residence on Oak Grove as a loving household, but a cloud came over that residence when Taylor sought to quit his job at Dean Witter. He began to ask friends how he could scam the company by feigning mental illness. He wanted to get disability and not have to work anymore.

Charney Hoffman said later, “Taylor didn’t say he was not really mentally disabled, but that was kind of what he implied in the idea that he was going on disability. He asked me to promise not to tell anybody what he was doing. I never promised not to tell anybody, just reassured him by telling him that I had no reason to tell anybody. He seemed to accept that as a commitment that I wouldn’t.

“I remember him ranting and raving how the welfare system was messed up. He asked me to trust him that by doing what he was doing, he would be able to ultimately fix the system. Maybe I asked him how. It didn’t make a lot of sense at the time. It seemed nutty.”

Taylor also told Tyler Bergland at one point that he was faking mental illness to scam the system. Bergland recalled, “Taylor said he didn’t want to work anymore. He’d like to scam the system. He said he’d practiced acting crazy and they’d have to pay him. I never saw him crazy, though.”

Taylor made Keri confirm his mental distress with Dean Witter. He wouldn’t shower or shave for a few days before going to see a psychiatrist. And once in the office, he would babble on about wild ideas and experiences. Keri said that she went along with him to several sessions. She recalled, “I had to drive him to a hospital once. When he got there, he hid in the bushes outside. Some big guys had to come outside and get him. I thought he was faking everything, including the sessions (with the psychiatrists).”

Taylor had decided that just being a stockbroker was too ordinary a life. After going through Impact and Harmony, he had his own plans for America and his place in it. The plans were very nebulous in the beginning—unformed thoughts and schemes that percolated in Taylor’s mind without solid foundation.

To get Keri on his wavelength, Taylor insisted that she go to Harmony in Sacramento. He drove her there without her knowing where she was really going. Keri later said of the experience, “I thought it would make me a better person. That it would change my life. I did become a woman after going through it. I got in touch with myself and my femininity. Able to accept love.”

What happened next depends on statements that Keri made at future dates. And the circumstances vary. In one version, she said that she and Olivia were looking at a Playboy magazine. Half-jokingly, they dared each other to pose nude for Playboy. Keri told Taylor what they were talking about and he said, “Go for it!”

In another version, it was Taylor who came up with the idea and talked her into doing it. Whatever happened, the truth of the matter was that Keri was concerned about the size of her breasts and wanted breast enhancement. The problem was that neither she nor Taylor had the money for this. Each breast enhancement would cost $5,000 per procedure. (Another source would speak of each breast enhancement costing $2,500, for a total of $5,000.)

Eventually Keri went to Taylor’s dad, Gerry, and got a loan to cover half the cost. She had to come up with money elsewhere for the other half. When the operation was completed, Keri’s figure became 34D-26-33.

With her new body, Keri posed nude as Olivia took photos of her in the backyard of the Oak Grove residence. Keri then sent the photos to Playboy. Awhile later, Playboy was impressed with Keri and they had a professional photographer photograph Keri in the nude. Some of the photos that eventually made it into Playboy were of her in-line skating in short shorts wearing a pink top. Another was of her crouching down near a fence with an Irish setter. Another had her posing with a straw hat, see-through pink blouse and tiny pink shorts.

The rest of the photos were the most revealing of all. Keri wore lingerie pulled aside to show her breasts and pubic area, or she wore nothing at all, except for gold-colored sandals. The Playboy article described her as a cross between Pamela Anderson and Claudia Schiffer. Keri said that she liked to think of her new self as a version of Marilyn Monroe. She described Marilyn as being sweet and friendly with everyone, male or female. Of the new her, Keri said that she always wandered around with a huge smile on her face and people wondered what she was so happy about. She responded that she was happy to be alive and had a lot more going for her than she did before.

One thing she wrote about in Playboy—and it’s not certain if she was talking about Taylor or another boyfriend—was a memorable occasion. Keri said that her boyfriend woke her up early one morning and told her he was going to give her a surprise. He told her to go back to sleep and he’d wake her up when he was ready. An hour and a half later, he blindfolded her and led her into the bathroom. Sade was playing on the radio. When he took her blindfold off, the Jacuzzi was filled with milk and little flower-shaped candles. He told her that Cleopatra had milk baths every day and she deserved one as well. Then he bathed her with milk and shaved her legs.

One thing more was added to Keri Furman’s new persona—she called herself Kerissa Fare in the Playboy article.

Not everything was milk and honey at Taylor’s house, however. Even though four other people lived in the house on Oak Grove Road and Taylor didn’t even work, it was decidedly “his house.” Keri said later, “Everybody had to do what he wanted to do. You lived by his rules. Because he went to Harmony, I had to go there, and Olivia and Brandon as well. No one was ever on his level. If you didn’t agree with him, then you ‘just didn’t get it.’ I was putty in his hands. He was coming up with a lot of schemes. Taylor ran the house. Everyone had to live by his rules.”

Whereas Taylor made everyone adhere to his rules and was very vocal about it, Keri said that Justin was quiet and sweet at the Oak Grove home. She said, “Justin was so innocent. He’d be excited by the smallest things. A song he loved. A piece of jewelry. Justin had few material things. He appreciated everything he had.

“He ate organic foods. He was compulsive about his food and health. He wouldn’t even try a cookie from a store. He did yoga and meditation in his bedroom. A lot of times, he was either in his bedroom or at work. He never had a girlfriend when I was there.

“Justin was totally nonviolent. One time I was going to kill a bug. He said, ‘No, take it outside.’ He wouldn’t kill a fly.”

Taylor introduced Keri to the rave scene. By this time, he was using and selling ecstasy at the raves. According to Keri, she didn’t take any drugs at that point. She claimed that she didn’t even take aspirin. But one day she had a terrible headache and Taylor gave her something. A while later, he asked her, “How do you feel?”

“I feel great!” she responded.

“That’s ecstasy,” he said.

From then on, Keri started using ecstasy with Taylor, especially at raves. She liked to dance and ecstasy gave her a feeling of freedom and movement.

At one point, Taylor forced Justin to go to a rave. According to Keri, “Taylor told Justin to watch him deal drugs. Justin didn’t want to do it, but he did it. It was our daily lives to be directed by Taylor. Taylor told him how to think, walk, talk and hold his head up. How to dress. He told Justin, ‘Don’t be flashy with jewelry.’”

The rave scene wasn’t Justin’s scene, however. He preferred dressing all in black and attending Goth clubs. He went alone several times and took Taylor and Keri once. She thought it was vampirish and kind of weird. Goth clubs were not for her or Taylor.

Everyone was working and paying rent at Oak Grove except for Taylor—even though, according to Keri, Taylor was receiving substantial checks for his disability. Taylor told the others it was important he kept his money to invest in the schemes he was coming up with. At first, these schemes were somewhat along the line of Harmony. He told Keri he wanted to start a counseling group for couples to be able to communicate better. He would be the facilitator and help their relationships. He didn’t want to use his real name for this, so she toyed around with the idea and made up some business cards for him with the name Jordan Taylor. The cards basically asked people if they wanted better relationships, better sex and more joy in their lives.

Taylor continued to sell drugs at the raves, especially ecstasy, to help fund his ideas. As time went on, his ideas started to gel toward a plan he called In To Me See. When spoken quickly, this phrase sounded like “Intimacy.” As his ideas for In To Me See became more grandiose, he talked Keri into dancing nude at a club in San Francisco called the Gold Club. She agreed, and as she danced and gyrated before men on the stage, she received money from them. Later, she would claim she could make between $500 and $1,000 a night at the Gold Club.

Even with this good income, Taylor wanted more and more money for In To Me See. And his plans for Keri’s involvement became more bizarre. According to Christina Kelly, she had a conversation with Keri about this. Keri supposedly told Kelly that Taylor wanted her to have private sessions with men, dance for them and then have whatever sex they wanted with them. According to Christina, Taylor became very upset when Keri supposedly gave one man oral sex, but did not charge him for it.

In To Me See changed and grew and began to focus around something that Taylor called the Twelve Principles of Magic. He went so far as to print these principles on the back of a psychedelic poster. He hung this poster on a wall in the house on Oak Grove for all to see. In a paraphrased version of the twelve principles, they read:

1. He was already perfect, so he could do no wrong.

2. There was no such thing as right or wrong.

3. He was all powerful and the creator of everything in his life.

4. Life was always right and he embraced all the results of it.

5. All the results of life, he created for himself.

6. He believed nothing, and perceived the world without fear.

7. His perceptions were always right.

8. Unconditional, fearless love was the most profound in the universe.

9. Spirit knew everything.

10. He gave total control by losing control.

11. What goes around, comes around.

12. There was a higher person than himself—Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father.

At some point In To Me See faded away and Taylor began to talk of Transform America, or Impact America. The terms became almost interchangeable as he used one term with a certain person and the other term with another. It was to be a very powerful institution with himself as its leader. He said he needed three core people to run Transform America. By now, the number three was almost sacred to Taylor. It had echoes of the Trinity, the three Wise Men and other connotations. Taylor wanted Justin and Keri to be among his three core people—people he could trust implicitly to carry out his orders.

Taylor kept explaining to Keri that there was no such thing as right or wrong. He didn’t like those terms she said. She recalled, “He explained that there was only good and evil, not right and wrong.”

Taylor began a remorseless crusade in his scheme to implement Transform America. Whether from too many drugs, or an actual onset of insanity, he became absolutely manic on the subject. He would talk to Keri and the others about it ad nauseam. When they didn’t understand what he was saying or disagreed with him, he would become irate.

Keri recalled, “If you didn’t go along with him, he’d talk to you for hours. It was always, ‘You shouldn’t think of things like that, you should think of things this way.’ Taylor was in control of everything. He was relentless. He was on drugs. If you disagreed, he’d say, ‘You’re stuck in your stuff. You aren’t on my level.’ And if you disagreed, you were evil.

“I’d beat myself up because I didn’t see things his way. I’d finally say, ‘Okay. I get it,’ even if I didn’t, just to make him stop.

“For the first time in my life, I really felt special and loved. I was afraid I would lose that if I disagreed with him.”

To try and make money for Impact America, Taylor came up with an idea called the Feline Club. He pushed Keri into helping him on the project. The club was supposed to be a place where rich men could meet beautiful women. It was to be an escort club, but only for rich yuppies. In essence, it would be a high-class prostitution club. Olivia and Keri were supposed to oversee the girls and the club and make suggestions to make it better.

Some of Taylor’s ideas about the place included free drugs on platters for anyone who wanted them. One idea was that it would cost a man $300 to be with a beautiful girl and not have sex with her. It would cost $500 or more to have sex with the girl.

Keri said later, “People would come over and say our house was weird.” Just how weird it had become can be ascertained by comments from Brandon’s girlfriend, Sarah Brents. Sarah, in her own way, was just as beautiful a blonde as Keri. Sarah stayed over at Oak Grove on several occasions and agreed with most other people that “Taylor was outgoing, vibrant and confident. He would walk into a room and draw attention to himself.”

She said of Justin, “He was a nice person. He seemed polite and together.”

Sarah saw a different side to Taylor one day when she asked him what he did for a living. He told her he was on disability. Then as Keri walked by, Taylor slapped her on her derriere and said, “This is my meal ticket.”

According to Sarah, Taylor used ecstasy, pot, meth, GHB and Special K (a cat tranquilizer used as an illegal drug). She said that Keri used ecstasy and pot. The only person in the household that didn’t seem to use drugs very often was Justin. Sarah made no mention of Brandon or Olivia.

Sarah was told at some point that Taylor made money by selling drugs at raves. She was asked to go to some Goth clubs by Justin, but she said, “I wasn’t into that.”

About the sexual nature of the house on Oak Grove, Sarah related later, “Justin, one time, watched Keri and Taylor having sex. It was all right, because Taylor said it was okay.”

Sarah also knew about Keri posing nude for Playboy, but nothing freaked her out more at the Oak Grove home than Justin’s eating habits. She said, “He would make large smacking sounds. He would get it all over his face. It was almost animalistic. One night I went into the kitchen and Justin was down on all fours, eating from a plate on the floor. I was scared. I went back to Brandon’s room.”

Of Justin’s sex life, Sarah said, “Well, he didn’t have one. He told me he’d had sex with a girl once in his twenties. And that was it.”

Sarah’s initial impression of Justin in the beginning was mainly positive, though she did acknowledge several quirks that he had, especially when it came to food. But her impression of him as a nice guy changed dramatically after she broke up with Brandon. It’s not apparent if Brandon left Oak Grove about that time, but Sarah continued to go there. Knowing that Sarah had broken up with Brandon, Justin asked her if they could go out sometime. She told him she didn’t think of him that way. She only thought of him as a friend. In response, he said, “I’ve only been friends with you to see if I could fuck you!”

Sarah was startled. She had never seen Justin in this light. But she was even more startled one day when he told her he had a new piercing and asked if she wanted to see it. Before she could answer, he pulled down his pants and revealed his penis. Sarah said later that he did not have a piercing there. His whole intent seemed to have been to flash her.

The entire household on Oak Grove was by now revolving around Taylor’s schemes. Taylor determined that he needed lots of money to implement Transform America, or as he was calling it more often now, Impact America. One of Taylor’s get-rich-quick schemes was the manufacturing of meth. Keri came home from work one day to find a meth lab set up in the garage. She was incensed. She said later, “I was mad. That was my home too! I didn’t want that there.”

In the long run, it didn’t matter what Keri wanted. Taylor ruled the roost at Oak Grove. He gathered all the ingredients to make meth, except red phosphorus. There is some indication that he eventually got the red phosphorus, but the drug operation apparently never amounted to much. Taylor seemed to be left in the roll of a distributor, not manufacturer.

Another person who didn’t like Taylor with drugs was his cousin Charney Hoffman. He said later, “Taylor was very belligerent when he was wasted. I remember driving with him one time and he criticized my driving. He said he was wasted and he could drive better than me. My brother grabbed his face as hard as he could, squeezed his face and all Taylor could do was put his hands up. He used to be articulate, polite and a joy to be around. Instead of him being able to talk his way out of a situation, that situation blew out of control.”

Christina Kelly said of this period, “I remember one rave in Santa Cruz where Taylor was selling ecstasy. We all used it. Justin reacted badly to it and got violently ill and threw up. I didn’t find the experience that great either. But then it started to kick in. At the rave, I enjoyed it. I felt good sometimes and other times I was nauseous.”

The Feline Club idea was dropped around this time by Taylor and a new plan emerged where he would get young girls from Mexico. He told Keri that they were to go down to Mexico, get the young girls and set them up in the house on Oak Grove. They would basically turn them into sex slaves. Taylor said he would train them in how to pleasure a man. And Keri was to keep an eye on them.

There was a half-baked plan to have the young girls pose as sandwich-delivery girls from a deli who would take sandwiches into a Dean Witter office. They would make friends with young rich yuppie stockbrokers and eventually invite them over for sex. Taylor would take pictures of them on the sly. Then after they had sex, the girls would threaten to sue Dean Witter for $50 million, because they would only be fourteen or fifteen years old. According to the plan, Dean Witter would settle for $20 million, and Taylor would even give the blackmailed stockbrokers a million, so they wouldn’t commit suicide.

Taylor and Keri eventually did go down to Mexico, but not to get young women as sex slaves, but rather to buy Rohypnol, the date-rape drug. Keri said later, “I didn’t want to do a lot of things he told me to do. But I’d go ahead and say okay, and then I’d do them.”

She even heard Taylor starting to talk about some scheme called Brazil. He only let her in on a very limited amount of what he was cooking up about Brazil. But by this time, Taylor was losing faith that Keri would ever be his third-core person. He became more suspicious of her and would often talk to Justin alone. He began to shut Keri out of his plans. She only heard the name Brazil mentioned and not much else about it.

Taylor became even more irate with Keri when she stopped dancing at the Gold Club. The money she made there was supposed to help fund Impact America. But Keri was beginning to be just as frustrated with Taylor as he was with her. She said later, “I realized at some point that he was just a parasite.”

Keri even tried to warn Justin not to become involved in Taylor’s schemes. They seemed to cost everyone money except Taylor, but Justin responded, “Oh, no! Taylor knows how to make money. He’ll pay me back.”

It was not only Taylor’s insistence on illegal schemes, but his insistence that he was divinely inspired that made Keri nervous. Taylor kept telling everyone in the household, “I’m on my life’s mission to impact America. It’s my calling from God! My mission is to spread love to everybody.”

Just what this vision of love was to be, Taylor let a woman named Jessyka Chompff know. She said later, “Impact America was to be a self-realization course. To learn more about yourself. Another term came up for it as well—Transform America. He would get things rolling by starting a club. Everyone there would be beautiful and rich. Taylor would be the one who got them together. It would be a kind of porno Fantasy Island. A Disneyland of sex.

“Taylor would market sex and drugs. But it sounded unrealistic to me. I thought, ‘Why would rich men need him to find beautiful women for them?’

“It was hard to listen to all this stuff. I thought he would be in over his head. I didn’t think he could be a drug kingpin.”

Keri was also having her doubts about Taylor and his wild schemes. She wanted to get on with a modeling career that had nothing to do with sex clubs, principles of magic or Impact America. She went down to Los Angeles to have more professional photos taken. She said of Taylor’s schemes, “I didn’t understand a lot of it. It didn’t feel right in my heart. I wanted out.”

By the end of 1999, Taylor was ready to toss her out of his inner circle anyway. It was now very apparent that Keri was not going to be his third-core person. He would need another—someone who would truly believe in him and his visions. Someone who would accept him as a prophet. Someone who knew in her heart and soul that he was divinely inspired by God. He didn’t have to look any farther than the Third Ward of the Latter-Day Saints Church in Walnut Creek.