CHAPTER
7
And Jacob, the self-proclaimed prophet of God, led Eda, his devoted disciple, into the wilderness where they would fast to cleanse themselves in the presence of the Lord.
The next time Jacob went into the wilderness five months later, he led a posse of detectives and RCMP officers to the spot where he had buried the mortal remains of his beloved disciple. This cleft in a rock on a mountainous stretch of wilderness above Exshaw in southern Alberta quickly became the centrepiece of one of the most bizarre crime scenes most of these officers would ever encounter.
Usually, human remains found in shallow graves in remote locations are a complete mystery. It often takes months to establish who the victim was, and some remains are never identified. In contrast, this case seemed at first to be very straightforward. Right from the start, the police knew the remains were those of Eda Dianne Lee, a 26-year-old mother of a young child. What’s more, they knew who’d buried her there. Jason Samuel “Jacob” Lee, Eda’s 30-year-old husband, had brought her to this place—and confessed that he had fashioned her grave himself.
It was Sunday, March 5, 2000, and police had been searching for Eda for five months since she had been reported missing by her friends. It seemed as if police had found the answer right there on the mountain. But the biggest mystery of all still remained. How had Eda died? Was foul play involved? Was this truly a crime scene? What crime had been committed? They had no idea an amazing investigation was about to unfold before them.
Calgary police detective Scott Buchanan was the first officer to stumble into the nearly unbelievable world of weird religion and cult behaviour that was behind this mysterious death. He and his partner, Detective Len Minello, had come into the picture five months earlier, in November 1999, when a couple who had been living on the streets of Calgary were reported missing by friends—an ordinary enough start to what became an extraordinary case. These friends knew that Jacob and Eda were fervently engrossed in religious beliefs that dominated their entire lives, and they started to worry when the couple disappeared in October. All agreed the two were inseparable, so new alarm bells started ringing when later they thought they’d seen Jacob alone, without Eda at his side.
For five months, the two detectives worked on the missing persons case, until they finally found Jacob. When Buchanan began interviewing him, he could hardly believe his ears. The case-hardened detective spent 27 hours talking with Jacob and later said he’d never heard a story like it in his entire 20-year career.
To start with, Jacob wasn’t the man’s real name. He had chosen to take the name of the son of Isaac in the Bible, the book that governed his whole life. He and Eda lived rough on Calgary’s streets, having no use for society, money or work. Jacob believed if God intended them to eat, he would provide food. In the Bible, Jacob was “always in touch with God and surrounded by visions, dreams, and even angels.” In the back streets of Calgary, Jacob was always in touch with God as well. He told Buchanan he spoke privately with God every day, receiving guidance on where and how he and Eda would get food, if any, that day.
Not only did Jacob Lee spend many hours every day studying the Bible, he was rewriting it to better reflect his religious beliefs. His version of the Bible was so extreme and radical that even church leaders couldn’t accept it. Jacob and Eda, one-time members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had been excommunicated for their views. Jacob was angry with the Mormon Church, which he said had watered down the true meaning of the scriptures.
Buchanan learned that church leaders weren’t the only ones disturbed by the teachings of Jacob. Some people close to the self-proclaimed prophet were scared he would one day exercise his power and become a notorious cult leader exhorting disciples to follow him to disaster for his beliefs. But Eda wasn’t scared. She followed him enthusiastically and revered him.
Even on the day Jacob came to her saying that God had spoken to him and had commanded the couple to fast in the wilderness for 40 days and nights—as Jesus had done—Eda didn’t question him. She believed Jacob’s every word. Right away, she and her prophet set off hitchhiking along the Trans-Canada Highway to Canmore, as God had directed. From there the couple hiked to a high, mountainous plateau above Exshaw, where the fast began. God had given Jacob precise instructions for the fast. One commandment forbade them to drink water, and they obeyed it steadfastly. For six days and nights nothing passed their lips.
There came a time when Jacob feared he was so weak he might die. Eda told him if that happened she would bury his body right there, high on God’s mountain. Soon it became obvious that it wasn’t Jacob who was fading, but Eda, who was nearly at death’s door. That morning God spoke to Jacob again and gave him permission to go fetch water for Eda. She was too weak to move, so Jacob clambered down the mountain to a stream to fetch water, which took nearly half the day. When he returned to their fasting place high on the mountain, Jacob found he was too late. He told Buchanan that when he got there he found Eda had died.
Now police had Jacob’s explanation of how Eda had passed away. No murder, no violence, and certainly not directly by his hand. Forensic pathologists in the medical examiner’s office would have to determine if his story was true or false, if Eda’s body was ever found. But what Jacob had done after Eda died definitely needed investigating by police, whatever he said.
Jacob had kept Eda’s death a secret for five months, but in his own eyes he’d done nothing wrong. When he found Eda dead he believed immediately she had gone to be with God in a better place. He even assured himself this was God’s will, prompting him to perform a burial ceremony for his disciple right there on the mountain. He said he had carefully dressed her body in what he described as religious clothing, wrapped it in a sleeping bag and placed it in a natural crevice on the mountainside.
Buchanan’s suspicions were aroused. Here was a man who admitted going into a remote mountainous area with a woman, and who returned alone some time later. For five months he never mentioned the woman again. When detectives questioned him, he said he did nothing wrong, but her remains were somewhere out there in the wilderness.
What happened next shocked Buchanan and his partner. Out of the blue, Jacob volunteered to take them to the body. So it was that Buchanan and other Calgary city police and RCMP officers followed Jacob back up the mountain behind Exshaw, where they found Eda’s remains exactly as Jacob had described. Of course, police couldn’t take Jacob’s word for everything, so forensic scientists, crime scene investigators and the medical examiner’s office were brought into the case.
Within three days, forensic pathologists at the medical examiner’s office had decided that Jacob was apparently speaking the truth. Staff Sergeant Pat Kamenka put out a series of press releases from the Canmore RCMP detachment outlining the medical examiner’s results. A forensic odontologist had compared dental records and confirmed the remains were Eda’s. The medical examiner said that, however she had met her death, it wasn’t a homicide; she had died of dehydration. Despite these findings, police decided a crime had been committed.
“The couple had gone into the woods to fast and during this time Eda passed away,” said the staff sergeant. “Mr. Lee [Jacob] then buried the body and returned to Calgary without notifying the police of the death of his wife.” Jacob was charged with unlawfully disposing of human remains and was remanded in custody to undergo psychiatric assessment to establish if he was fit to stand trial.
While Jacob was temporarily behind bars, a disturbing story surfaced about two more of his disciples. They had been snatched from his grasp by their relatives and friends shortly before it was feared he was about to take them into the mountains to fast. If Jacob’s plans had come to pass, the disciples would have taken their two young children, one of them a newborn baby, with them into the wilderness. This incident happened in the months after Eda had died on the mountain, when no one knew she was there, when Jacob was keeping her death a secret, and when he was clearly recruiting new disciples to follow him.
One day, a couple driving to Edmonton picked up a hitchhiker. His religious fervour and charismatic character overwhelmed the couple as they talked in the car. By the time they reached Edmonton he had converted them to his ways and persuaded them to let him live with them. “It was scary,” said the couple’s closest friend in Calgary, who would later be instrumental in helping to snatch the two new disciples away from their leader.
Jacob gave his new female disciple the name of Rachel, forbidding her to use her old name. In the Bible, Rachel was Jacob’s second wife. The self-proclaimed prophet’s strict rules about fasting were imposed on Rachel, which was alarming as she was about to give birth to the couple’s second child. Her Calgary friend was horrified to discover that there was no food in her house and no money for food, as the new disciples had handed over all their cash to Jacob. But things were about to get much worse.
The two new disciples started selling all their possessions, turning everything they owned into cash and handing it over to Jacob. They had been running a successful business in Calgary, but to their friend’s amazement, they suddenly sold it, and all the proceeds went to their new master. They even sold their Christmas presents to provide cash to buy the knapsacks that they would need during their upcoming fast in the mountains.
What happened next was so drastic it prompted the friend to take action. Jacob had talked with God one day and told Rachel she must have her baby at home as God didn’t believe in hospitals. The friend couldn’t stand by any longer. She was in a race against time to save the couple and their unborn baby. She knew her friends’ parents all lived in Manitoba. She called them, warning them of what was taking place and asking them to help her.
The family members drove straight from Manitoba to Calgary and arrived just as Rachel started going into labour. They ignored Jacob’s orders and raced her to the hospital, where her baby was delivered safely. Several weeks later, Rachel, her 18-month-old son and her newborn baby all disappeared and were reported to police as missing persons. Just as mysteriously, they returned after seven days.
Jacob’s impact on the couple’s lives had been totally disruptive. Rachel returned to Manitoba where her two children were placed in the custody of their grandparents. Her husband was admitted to the psychiatric ward of a Calgary hospital, where one day a “brother” he never had tricked his way into the ward to visit him. It was Jacob, still trying to maintain his hold over his disciple. Back in Manitoba, the couple’s relatives were relieved they had managed to intervene. Thanks to the warning from the friend in Calgary, they arrived before Jacob could lead their loved ones and the two children on another fast into the mountains. It had been a close call.
A great deal more about the background to this odd case was revealed on the day of Eda’s funeral, on March 18, 2000. From his jail cell that day, still awaiting his first appearance in court, Jacob talked to the media at length about his religious beliefs, his life with Eda and how she had died. That day, Eda’s family transformed her funeral into a musical celebration of her life, for she had been a talented musician. She played the violin at age three and the piano at eight. She earned a scholarship to the University of Calgary and taught violin for seven years. At the service, her musically gifted family members played Eda’s compositions and the choir sang a song she’d once asked to be sung at her funeral.
In his eulogy, Eda’s father said that her musical virtuosity had brought “tranquillity to my soul” and “happiness to our family.” Another tribute to her musical life came in a letter from Jacob’s mother in Tennessee, where she was looking after the couple’s son, Joseph. She recalled that Eda and Jacob wrote music and sang songs together, and that they had recorded a tape to be saved for their son to hear. Of Eda, she wrote, “Her sweet spirit lives on in her son, and her memory and her love for him lives on in our hearts.”
Eda’s great-uncle, LaMont Matkin, put her marriage to Jacob and her strange death into context, remembering that the couple had been excommunicated only three years earlier from the very church where the funeral service was now being conducted. He used carefully chosen words. “Eda was beguiled and deceived by someone who lost the understanding of the sacred role of God in a marriage,” he told the mourners. Later that day, Eda was buried after a short graveside service in Cardston, in southern Alberta.
Jacob didn’t agree with what Eda’s great-uncle had said. At the very moment family members and mourners were celebrating Eda’s life in the church, he sat in his Calgary Remand Centre cell explaining his views on life and how they set him apart from other men. To begin with, he said, Eda wouldn’t have appreciated having a large funeral such as the one her family had organized. He claimed Eda had wanted a simple burial with no grave marker—exactly like the one he gave her on the mountainside above Exshaw. “I said a prayer and dedicated the site where she was placed and I felt it was done appropriately,” said the self-proclaimed prophet of God.
Jacob went on to say that after they had been excommunicated by the Mormon Church, he and Eda had lived for years on the streets of Calgary, sleeping under bridges, in ditches or in the bush. Though the city’s soup kitchens were available to them, they only once had a meal there, believing that God would provide sustenance. Sometimes God guided them to find food in trash cans in back alleys. Their normal day would be a non-stop round of praying, reading the scriptures and moving on to find a new sleeping place for the night.
But mostly, their purpose in life was to live by their interpretation of the Gospels and to preach the word to everyone they met. Jacob likened it to “God sending out apostles to preach to the people,” taking no money or food with them. “Just go and accept whatever people provide for you, just receive that and be grateful. God will provide.” The couple hitchhiked everywhere and preached to anyone who would listen.
Eda’s family members weren’t impressed by Jacob. Her parents knew that their university-educated and musically talented daughter sometimes suffered depression and needed a nutritious diet and regular sleep. They had been shocked when Jacob persuaded Eda to marry him after they’d only known each other three weeks. And they were worried when shortly before the couple left for their “spiritually cleansing experience” on the mountaintop, Eda called them to apologize for everything. They never saw her alive again.
From his remand centre cell Jacob repeated that he really was a prophet and that he was not upset at Eda’s death. “If God had wanted her to live he would have sustained her long enough for me to give her water. I feel very much at peace with it,” he said. Despite professing to be a prophet, Jacob didn’t like being branded a “cult leader.” He drew a distinction between deliberately going out to aggressively recruit people to follow him, which he denied, and letting people come to him, listen to him and learn his teachings, which he admitted. One of his strict rules was that no one could ever take his photograph, so that no image of him could exist. But on the day he chose to talk to the media, he produced a carefully posed photograph of himself in a flowing white robe with a religious symbol of faith round his neck, and his hands clasped in his lap as if in prayer. He had a short beard and moustache, and his long hair cascaded around his shoulders.
He looked very different a few days later when he appeared in Canmore provincial court charged with unlawfully disposing of Eda’s remains. He was now clean-shaven, his luxurious locks cut short, and a black leather jacket replaced his flowing white robe. After a short hearing, Jason Samuel Lee (the court having dealt with him under his real name) was released on bail to appear the following month to face the charge.
A surprise awaited the media assembled outside the court. Jason, quickly reverting to being Jacob, stepped outside the building and made a peculiar speech of forgiveness from the courthouse steps. Jacob forgave the media—who had no idea they needed forgiving! “I publicly forgive all the people who’ve lied about this situation,” he began. “I forgive all the media who have misrepresented the truth and publicized those lies and misrepresentations.” He wouldn’t elaborate on what he considered to be lies. He told the assembled media he had loved his wife very much. “I never forced her to do anything. What she did, she did out of her own choice, and I did out of my own choice.” Then his lawyer drove him back to Calgary.
When the case was finally heard on May 31, 2000, Jason’s lawyer, Joe Nahman, had struck a deal with the prosecution, which brought more pain to Eda’s family. The serious charge of unlawfully disposing of his wife’s remains was dropped, and instead Jason pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of failing to report her death.
A few new facts came out during the hearing. Nahman said the couple had spent their six-day fast in the wilderness singing hymns and reading the scriptures. Eda was as much attuned to their beliefs as Jason was, maybe even more so as she wanted to be totally reliant on Christ. On the day she had died, it had taken Jason six hours in a severely weakened state to fetch the water and get back to her side, where he was too late to save her. Judge John Reilly said he was satisfied Jason had committed no foul play in Eda’s death and sentenced him to one day in jail. Such leniency outraged Eda’s family. “Her parents are deeply hurt,” said her great-uncle Matkin. “The one-day sentence is certainly inadequate, but what can we do?”
In the Bible, Jacob deceived his own family about his birthright. Eda’s family members said they felt deceived by the justice system, and at her funeral Matkin told mourners she had been deceived by the man she had followed. There are those who felt it was entirely fitting that when he sought a new name for himself, Jason Lee chose to call himself Jacob—the great deceiver and manipulator.