CHAPTER 5
Children of Thunder
Taylor Helzer decided that he needed a house to plan everything in private with Justin and Dawn. Since he wasn’t working, it was going to be up to Justin and Dawn to foot the bills, but Taylor had them so much under his influence at that that would not be a problem. All he had to do was to get Justin to leave his present residence.
All winter and spring of 2000, Justin had been living in a house on Wren Lane in Concord. He was only renting a room in the house and had other housemates there as well. One of these was Johnette Gray. Gray already knew Justin well because they had started to work for AT&T at the same time in 1999. Since Johnette’s own house was in Sacramento, about seventy miles away, and she worked in Concord, she decided to rent a room in Concord during the workweek and go home on days off.
She related about Justin, “He was naive and a slow learner on the job. Very methodical and patient. He addressed everything in a thoughtful way. I accepted him, but noticed he was very unusual.
“When we went to lunch, he had an unusual way of eating. It was loud and he’d chew with his mouth open. He’d chew his food very slowly. He was mainly a vegetarian, but he would eat an occasional burger.”
Once Gray was in the house with Justin, she was able to observe his habits more closely. She noticed that he was very regimented in his living and always ate and went to bed at the same time. He didn’t watch television and would only listen to a radio in his room once in a while.
Gray also noticed that Justin could be talking about something and then suddenly stop, as if he’d run out of steam. Once, he even told her, “I don’t want to talk anymore. Just because I’m in your presence doesn’t mean I want someone to talk to me.”
Despite these quirks, Gray thought that Justin was “naturally nice and gentle.” He talked about spiritual issues once in a while, but he didn’t proselytize. It wouldn’t have worked with her anyway—she was a confirmed atheist.
Gray also observed how Justin exercised and meditated daily. His exercises were yoga in nature and very physical, almost to the realm of martial arts. When he did these exercises, he grunted and moaned and cursed. Eventually the landlady had to tell him to tone them down.
Justin told Gray that he had been raised Mormon, but now he wasn’t so sure about their doctrines. He said that he’d been to a retreat in Sacramento called Harmony and he really liked it. To Gray, it seemed that the retreat wasn’t so much religious in nature as it was a self-awareness group. Justin showed her a video of Harmony, but Gray was not impressed. She said later of its leader, “The woman looked kind of lost.”
The only socializing Justin did while at Wren Lane was to go out once in a while to a Goth club. At those times, he would dress up in black clothes, black boots and black cape. It was his one foray at being hip.
Since Johnette Gray wrote poetry, Justin decided to show her a poem he had written. She read it and said later, “It was very unusual and creepy. Especially the last lines.” The poem described bloodletting and the sacrifice of someone on an altar. The sacrifice victim gave his life for the greater good of humanity.
When Johnette was through reading it, she asked Justin, “Did you dream this?”
“No,” he answered.
She responded, “Well, it would make a good scary movie.”
Justin and Johnette also had another housemate named Michael Henderson. Like Gray, Henderson noticed Justin’s strange eating habits and said, “He really got into his food. He was like a little kid. The food would get all over his face. He was unusual. But we got along.”
Working on Justin’s vulnerabilities and fears, Taylor painted the picture of a world that needed saving. He tapped into Justin’s considerable mistrust of the federal government, which had been reinforced by Bo Gritz. According to Taylor, America needed redirection, and they were the ones to do it. But first they needed adequate accommodations. Something set away from prying eyes. They needed a house of their own.
Tom Cheng managed a house that his cousin rented on Saddlewood Court in Concord. This was in a nice suburban part of town near the Mount Diablo foothills. In the spring of 2000, the people who had been living in the rental house for a number of years moved out, and the house was up for rent again. Cheng hired a real estate agent to show the house and several people looked at it. One of those people was Justin Helzer. Justin was duly impressed with the house. It seemed to fit the parameters that Taylor had laid down—in a quiet neighborhood, where they would not be conspicuous behind closed doors.
Justin went to look at it a second time and brought his sister Sky, who was actually Dawn Godman. Justin met at the house with Tom Cheng and Justin seemed like a “nice guy” to Cheng. Cheng showed Justin around the house and they did a walk-through. They both agreed to what shape the house was in and noted all the defects.
An agreement was written that only Justin would be the one living in the house with no other people there. Cheng asked why Justin needed so much space, since he was going to be living on his own. Justin answered that he needed one bedroom for exercise, one bedroom for meditation and one bedroom for sleeping. Justin never mentioned that Taylor and Dawn would be moving into the house as well.
A rental agreement was signed by Justin on April 29, 2000. The rent would be $1,650 a month. He made an initial deposit of $3,650 to move in. Justin paid Cheng with a cashier’s check.
Despite the fact that only Justin was supposed to live at the house on Saddlewood Court, Dawn and Taylor soon moved in with him. The residence would not only be a living space for them—it would be the launching pad for all of Taylor’s schemes.
Dawn later explained, “There would be three insiders. This was because when Christ went to the New World in the Book of Mormon, three disciples asked to remain with him until the Second Coming. There was a parallel story in the Bible. In the Book of John in the Bible, John requested of Jesus that he stay until the Second Coming. John’s father was called Thunder.
“I took on the name Sky, Taylor took on the name Jordan and Justin took on the name Jason.
“The J letters were significant. Both of the original Sons of Thunder’s names (John and James) started with the letter J. In the first inception of Taylor’s plans, there was a kidnapping plan to kidnap five people. We would get their stock portfolio information. These would be placed into another person’s account and then it would be funneled to Taylor. The five people would have to be killed and then the person who opened the account would have to be killed as well.”
By this time, Taylor, Justin and Dawn knew that the account holder would be Selina Bishop. They still weren’t sure who the people who owned stocks and mutual funds would be.
“Our meetings began in earnest at Saddlewood,” Dawn said. “Taylor told Justin he needed a gun. It was understood why he needed the gun.”
On May 5, 2000, Michael Raymond was working at Hogan’s Sporting Goods in Concord. A tall, blond-haired young man with a ponytail came into the store asking to see some handguns. The handguns were kept in the back of Hogan’s and Raymond took the young man back there to view a display case. The young man was Justin Helzer.
Justin told Raymond that he had used a 9mm Beretta pistol as an MP in the military and liked them. Raymond gave him one of the guns from the display case to look at, and Justin handled it. It was a semiautomatic Beretta 92.
Justin liked the gun and decided to purchase it. He showed his driver’s license and military discharge papers. The driver’s license had his old address printed on it. The total cost for the purchase came to $550.
While he was at it, Justin bought a box of .22 shells and .762 Russian ammo that would work in an AK-47 assault rifle. He also bought some 12-gauge shotgun shells. Justin gave the clerk his old address on Wren Avenue as his place of residence.
On June 6, a person calling herself Sky Anderson bought a Craftsman, Model 315, reciprocating saw and blades at a Sears store. She paid $117.42 in cash for the items. Later, she went online with eBay and purchased a Stun Master taser. It could produce up to a hundred thousand volts and drop a person to the floor instantly. Dawn paid $79.95 in all for two tasers. She used a false name and a PO box for the place where the tasers were to be delivered.
In June, Selina Bishop was at a mall and had some photos taken at a machine there. Some of them were meant for Jordan. Selina told Bernbaum that Jordan was cooking up some scheme and was going to get a whole lot of money. She said that Jordan didn’t want to share any of the money with his ex-wife, so he was going to funnel the money into an account that Selina would set up in her name. She seemed to think that Jordan was going to receive $200,000, and that he would give her half. Later, this was modified to $100,000, and she would get $20,000.
Selina told friend Jordan Miller a slightly different version of this. According to Miller, “Selina was very much in love with Jordan. He told her that he was getting an inheritance from his great-uncle and the money would allow them to live together. He needed to hide this from his ex-wife. It was about one hundred twenty-five thousand and she would get twenty-five thousand, if she helped him in his scheme.
“My boyfriend, Jess, and I weren’t happy about this scheme. But she said she was so happy with him. We didn’t want to burst her bubble. After all the struggles in her life, we were happy for her.
“I wanted to see a photo of this Jordan, but he wouldn’t let her take one of him. He said he was protecting her from his drug ring. We were supposed to meet him at a bar in San Francisco, but I had to work and he was always changing his plans.
“I did hear one of his messages on her phone machine, and it was full of love. But she was upset because she couldn’t go over his house. He did buy her a cell phone so he could call her anytime.”
On July 2, 2000, Dawn bought three ski masks at Copeland’s Sports in Concord. She then bought three pairs of water-ski gloves. Dawn had to return later, however, because two of the gloves were too small for Justin and Taylor. They needed extra-large gloves for their hands. Clerk Elizabeth Hand on that occasion recalled Dawn at her counter with a man in the background. The man was probably either Taylor or Justin.
Dawn also bought some weights for a weight set. They eventually were to be used for the weight they could add to a bag, not for exercise. These cost $49. Dawn paid for all of this with cash.
Pagers were purchased for the Children of Thunder so they could keep in touch with each other. These were purchased at Double Header Pagers. And a voice mail service was opened up for Dawn, Taylor and Justin. All three members of Children of Thunder had cell phones as well, but Justin rarely used his.
On July 10, Dawn adopted a young Rottweiler at the Contra Costa County Animal Services Center. The dog was named Jake. Later that day, Taylor adopted a Border collie and named him Blackie. A third dog, an Australian shepherd, was adopted by Justin and named Taser.
They also adopted a fourth dog, a large mastiff, but due to its massive 180 pounds, and aggressiveness, the animal control center required that the dog be spayed and neutered. The operation was done, but neither Taylor nor Justin nor Dawn ever picked up the mastiff.
The dogs were part of Taylor’s scheme—he wanted to see if the dogs would eat human remains if they were chopped up and fed to them. Dawn began to build a dog run in the backyard of the Saddlewood residence. She hammered and nailed and used the reciprocating saw. Neighbor Kaye Shaman was aware of a lot of construction and a lot of noise coming from the backyard of her neighbor’s house.
The meetings of the Children of Thunder were on a daily basis now at Saddlewood. All of them would sit down in a circle and open each meeting with a prayer. Then Taylor would give out his ideas. Dawn said later, “We’d talk about if an idea was a valid one or not. Whether it would work and how expensive it might be. When Taylor talked, I believed that Spirit was talking through him.
“We believed as Children of Thunder we were declaring war on Satan. This was so Satan wouldn’t get the opportunity to be loosed upon the earth. Evil was Satan and his minions. He was the opposite of God. God is pure joy. But Satan was the balance. Such as light and dark. Joy and sadness. Satan was the balance of God.
“Justin even once declared, ‘Satan got a bad rap.’”
Taylor’s role as a prophet was also taking on one more unforeseen and incredible aspect. Dawn recalled, “Taylor believed that the Latter-Day Saints had gone astray. It was twisted. He didn’t agree with some of their principles anymore. I would think and pray about what Taylor said and then decide. Justin didn’t say what he felt.”
According to Dawn, there was a scheme Taylor called Brazil, where Brazilian orphans would be adopted by them. The children would be brought back to the United States and molded into assassins who only followed orders from Taylor. They would be sent on a mission to kidnap the Twelve Apostles of the LDS Church, its president and his two counselors. These men would be forced to contact the media and say that the United States government was behind the kidnapping. Chaos would be created across the United States, especially in Utah. In the midst of the chaos, Taylor would be seen as a unifying force in the Mormon Church. He would be appointed by the kidnapped president of the church, on television, to become the new president of the Mormon faith. Taylor as president, and his counselors, Justin and Dawn, would form the new hierarchy and choose twelve new apostles. The old apostles would be killed, as well as the old president and his two counselors. Such things had to be done, Taylor insisted, to save the world.
Brazil, however, was for the future. Children of Thunder project was to take place within weeks. Taylor relied a lot on Dawn because of her organizational skills. He didn’t believe that Justin had what it took in that capacity. Taylor would constantly test both Dawn and Justin to see if they would follow his orders, no matter how outrageous. Dawn said, “Justin didn’t challenge Taylor on any of his plans. Once war was declared on Satan, Justin was on board.”
It was determined as time went on that the dogs wouldn’t work as a means of disposing human body parts. Taylor, Dawn and Justin had bought soup bones and meat from a deli and tried feeding it to the dogs, but they just wouldn’t eat enough. Blackie and Taser were released at an unknown location near Bay Point, never to be seen again. Jake, however, was retained. Taylor had a hard time giving up his plan to feed some human flesh to the Rottweiler.
Taylor allowed very few visitors to the Saddlewood residence during the inception of Children of Thunder. One of those allowed to come there was Debra McClanahan. She said later, “Taylor allowed me there, but he didn’t fully trust me. I had to complete four things before Taylor said that he would trust me. The first three things were to take all three levels of Harmony. He would tell me what the fourth was later.”
Taylor did open up to her, however, about some of his ideas. He asked her if a great man could become a prophet.
“President Hinckley is a prophet,” she responded.
Taylor said, “He’s just a man, after all.”
Debra recalled, “Taylor never said to me that he was a prophet, and I didn’t think that he was. But I was led to believe that the others thought he might be a prophet. Dawn certainly believed it.
“I did think that Taylor was a seer and a revelator. Someone who has foresight and can see into the bigger picture. He was being spoken to by Spirit. He would just listen as if in a trance. You couldn’t talk when he was in such a state. After the Spirit spoke, he’d point directly at Dawn and say, ‘Get this.’ He wanted to point out how important it was.”
To get closer to Taylor, Debra McClanahan took the first two levels of Harmony in July 2000. The third level was scheduled for September 2000. Taylor let her in on a variation of the schemes he was planning. According to Debra, one scheme was that Taylor would select three young, beautiful, underage girls and take them on a cruise, one by one. Each cruise would be at least five days in duration. He’d teach them everything they needed to know about sex and how to please a man. He’d set them up in an apartment and have a caretaker watch over them and cater to their needs.
In a variation of the plan Dean Witter, the girls would start to work in a sandwich shop and deliver sandwiches and lunch items to stockbrokers at Dean Witter. The girls would come on to young men in the company and take them back to the apartment. They would supply the men with Viagra and ecstasy and have sex with them.
Once they gained the men’s trust, they would “pull sheets.” In effect, they were going to take photos of blue sheets spread all over a bed, so that they could blackmail the brokers. The stocks would fall; the girls would threaten the stockbrokers with blackmail. The girls would also get attorneys to threaten Dean Witter with lawsuits of up to $50 million. Taylor estimated that Dean Witter would settle for $20 million, and he and the girls would accept. The girls would get some money, the lawyer would get some money and Taylor would take the lion’s share. He’d even give a million dollars apiece to the stockbrokers, who had been blackmailed, so they wouldn’t commit suicide.
Of all of this, Debra said, “Oh, wow!” She also added later, “I thought it was just wild talk.”
Debra came up with a wild idea of her own, however. She told Taylor she would meet someone who made adult films and ask $2,000 for being in a movie. She thought she could make $6,000 to $8,000 a week by this means.
Taylor had an unexpected reply, though, especially for someone who had pushed Keri Furman into dancing nude and posing for Playboy. He told Debra, “If you think that’s what you want to do, okay. But is that what you want to be known for?”
Debra discussed the adult-film idea with Justin. He was more enthused about it than Taylor. Justin told her he’d like to film a man and a woman having sex on the hood of a car during rush hour. Justin didn’t say he wanted to be in the movie, but he definitely wanted to film it. He told Debra, “It would be fun.”
Debra related that one time after “intimacy” with Taylor, he put a folder on the bed. It contained a photo of women in lingerie and a questionnaire. She saw that it contained two pages of true and false questions. The questions contained such things as:
There is no difference between right and wrong? T F
There is no such thing as good and evil? T F
Stealing is wrong? T F It depends
Breaking the law is wrong? T F It depends
Murder is wrong? T F It depends
Taylor asked her if she had any problems with the questionnaire. She told him that she didn’t.
Taylor and Dawn wouldn’t let Debra McClanahan in on everything that was happening with Children of Thunder. Debra said of Saddlewood, “They’d often speak to each other in code in my presence.”
Just how touchy Taylor could be, Debra found out one evening at Saddlewood while they were all playing a game of Risk. Dawn got up from the table and it was Debra’s turn. Justin took two cards that he neglected to take during his turn and Taylor told him, “You can’t take two cards. If you do, I’m not playing anymore.”
Justin took his two cards and that was it as far as Taylor was concerned. He got up from the table and refused to play anymore.
There is evidence, though sketchy at best, that Taylor, Dawn and Selina went out on a personal water-craft at Lake Berryessa, and a receipt from that area seems to prove that they did. According to Dawn, “Taylor’s thoughts were that Selina should have some fun before she was killed.”
Taylor wanted a safe kept over at Debra McClanahan’s apartment. Debra said, “Dawn had a portable clothes washer and wanted to sell it, but I didn’t have enough money at the time to buy it. Dawn told me I could have the washer if a safe was stored in my apartment.”
“But you have to leave it in the front room,” Dawn said.
Debra replied, “No, we can leave it in my daughter’s room.
“I didn’t feel good about having that safe in my house. Taylor and Dawn brought it over with the washing machine. Eventually I put the safe in my bedroom in the walk-in closet.”
Debra became aware at some point that Taylor was storing drugs in the safe. These were the drugs he sold at raves. One day Dawn was getting into the safe and Debra’s daughter found a small package of drugs that was left out. Debra was incensed about this, since her daughter could have found the drugs and unwittingly swallowed them. She told Dawn and was very angry. Dawn said that it would never happen again.
Justin knew about the contents of the safe as well. On two occasions, he got the safe, pulled some things out of it and returned it to Debra’s closet.
Interestingly enough, Taylor told Debra McClanahan about Brazil, even though he didn’t trust her in some other areas. According to her, he said, “It’s important to get a plan into action with a board of twelve directors. [He] would set it up as an orphanage of these Brazilian children and all of them would have to go through Harmony. They would all have to owe allegiance to [him]. Justin and Dawn would be below [him] in the hierarchy. And [I] would work for Justin.”
As Children of Thunder moved along, Taylor was becoming more and more manic. He used a lot of meth during this time and talked, on and on, at great length. He also had a short fuse. Once while playing canasta at Saddlewood, Debra discarded a queen, and Dawn said in an offhand remark, “I knew she was going to do that.”
Taylor shouted at her, “That’s a lie! No you didn’t!”
Obviously there was to be only one seer and prophet at Saddlewood Court.
Another time Debra McClanahan was lying on a bed next to Taylor watching a videotape on philosophy. She spoke up during the video and he became very angry because it interrupted his train of thought. He rewound the tape and made her watch the whole thing again from the beginning.
Debra said later, “He would often get upset and angry. He would get up and walk out of a room if you didn’t see things his way. He’d say we didn’t ‘get it.’”
Unexpectedly, Mike Henderson, Justin’s old housemate, was allowed to come to Saddlewood Court by Taylor during the days leading up to the Days of Thunder. Henderson arrived about seven-thirty one evening and had a meal of calzones with Taylor, Justin and Dawn. Henderson said that Taylor was dressed up at the time in a shiny dark outfit and Dawn was dressed up like a gypsy. Only Justin wore regular clothes.
Dawn told Henderson that she was a practicing witch and Taylor said he was a warlock. Then Taylor tried to impress him with a mind-reading trick. Henderson was not terribly impressed, but said later of it, “Hey, whatever floats your boat.”
Taylor wrote in a journal that he was starting a coven. He was inspired to do it so “that the weak may become strong.” He said he would advertise it in a newspaper. It was to be open to all and would honor darkness and light. In a prophetic line, he wrote, “All those who are afraid, let them run now.”
He said the coven would not be about money—it would be about mastering fear. The coven would be filled with ritual, the ritual of darkness and light. There would be a meeting in the daytime and one at night, to honor darkness and light. Then in a side note, he wrote, “Keri is the Lamb, I am What Is.” [Taylor still kept in touch with Keri by phone.]
In another note, he wrote about Spirit and nature. He said that free agency was not a gift from God, but a law of the universe, adding that mankind was all sparks from the same fire. He stressed that no one was a victim of God, and no one was a victim of their mortal nature. He spoke of forces that constantly tugged on us to and fro, and the most difficult thing was to “go the other way.” The farther one went in one direction, the stronger polar force in the opposite direction. He said that so many people wandered around sideways and wondered why they felt so dead. As for him, he said that he got to move Now on his Father’s straight and narrow.
The chart he drew on the next page was anything but straight and narrow. It was a circle called the Medicine Circle. To the east was water and trust and faith. To the south, fire, wisdom, clarity and sight. To the west was earth and strength. And to the north was wind and the straight and narrow.
One thing was a constant in the house on Saddlewood, a need for more and more money to implement Taylor’s grandiose plans. Taylor told Justin to take out another loan, and Justin dutifully complied. On July 21, 2000, Justin went in to a Washington Mutual Savings branch in Concord and applied for a $5,000 loan. A loan specialist there, Steve Trahain, looked at Justin’s credit report and noted that Justin already had a debt of nearly $30,000 in various loans and credit card debts. Trahain turned down Justin’s application for yet another loan.
Taylor tried his luck at getting money from Jeanette Carter. He phoned her in Bay Point and said that he was onto a hot stock deal. If she would let him invest $5,000, he told her he would double her money in two weeks. Carter could hear Justin’s voice in the background saying, “Yes, he’d double it for you.”
According to Dawn Godman, much later, if Jeanette Carter had given Taylor the $5,000, the Children of Thunder would have been called off. Just how long Children of Thunder would have been called off, however, is anybody’s guess. Five thousand dollars was a drop in the bucket when Taylor kept saying it would take at least a million dollars to implement his largest schemes.
Jeanette Carter declined to give Taylor the money, but she did allow him to come out to her five-acre property and fire his pistol. This was probably the 9mm Beretta that Justin had purchased for him. Taylor told Carter, “I have big plans.”
Next door to the Children of Thunder on Saddlewood Court, Kaye Shaman was getting fed up with the dog’s noise. It seemed to be a vicious dog that would jump at the fence when anybody was around. One day the dog got loose from the yard and was roaming the sidewalk. Shaman became so upset, she phoned Tom Cheng, who knew her through his previous tenants.
Shaman’s phone call alerted Cheng to the fact that there were three people living in the rental home on Saddlewood, rather than just one. And they had a dog to boot, which was not part of the contract. Cheng drove by the residence one evening to investigate, but it was getting late and he didn’t knock on the door or look into the backyard. At the time, he had no idea that he was on the Eve of the Children of Thunder.
Taylor, Dawn and Justin got into their premission mode. Taylor had originally picked a target day of Saturday, because most people on his list would be home, but he later changed this to a Sunday. Dawn said of the final plans, “It was Taylor’s call to make. It would be based on old records of stock portfolios and areas that would be safest for us. Based on whether people had a close neighbor or lived close to a freeway. Whether they had a normal routine.
“Taylor wanted the targets to be elderly people, people who’d already lived a long life. He planned to use enough Rohypnol on them so they would just stop breathing.”
Just in case, though, both Taylor and Justin would carry briefcases with pistols, tasers, handcuffs, leg irons and a small blowtorch. The plan was set for the following afternoon of Sunday, July 30, 2000. Taylor’s former client Bob White, of Walnut Creek, was on the top of the list due to his having the largest portfolio, and also the fact that he lived alone.