A HOUSE DIVIDED/Tensions divide Abilene-area cult/FROM BUFFALO BILL TO YISRAYL

By EVAN MOORE
Staff

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ABILENE - It nestles just east of here in the little community of Eula, at first glance a rural trailer park, a little ragged by some standards, with a hodgepodge of mobile homes scattered over 44 brushy acres.

Only the locked gate and guardhouse bespeak anything more uncommon inside.

Behind the gate, however, is a cult, a religious sect that former members say practices polygamy and slavery and one they say is simmering on the verge of internal violence.

""The House of Yahweh Welcomes You," reads the cryptic sign in Eula.

Its message is true if you are one of the thousands from across the country who send tithes, donations or payments for any of the numerous tapes or publications of pastor Yisrayl Hawkins.

True if you are one of the 800 or more who thrice yearly make a pilgrimage down Farm Road 603 to rent a trailer space on the 44 ""holy" acres and attend one of Hawkins' weeklong ""feasts."

True if you are a devoted member of Hawkins' flock, willing to change your name to ""Hawkins," pierce your ear with an awl, become a slave and hand over 30 percent of your income.

Unmarketable properties

It's not true if you are one of Hawkins' unfortunate neighbors who has watched his property become virtually unmarketable since Hawkins' doomsday cult moved in five years ago. Not true if you represent the Callahan County Tax Appraiser's Office, any law enforcement agency or the news media.

In that case you'll meet with the locked gate and a group of Hawkins' ""guards."

It's not true if you come to ask about the strange, polygamous lifestyle of the 62-year-old Hawkins and his inner circle of elders. Not true if you ask about the peculiar, unsolved murder of a Yahweh member four years ago or about House of Yahweh members with ties to violent militia groups.

Not true if you question Hawkins' financial dealings, his prophecies or his anointed post as founder, messiah, pastor and potentate of The House of Yahweh.

In fact, Yisrayl (pronounced ""Israel") Hawkins, affable in person and compelling in a sermon, heard on the radio and seen on public access television across the nation, doesn't welcome scrutiny at all.

He hasn't dealt with much. Named by an older brother at birth, he was formerly ""Buffalo Bill" Hawkins, ex-rockabilly band leader, ex-gas station attendant, ex-policeman and an unknown in religious circles when he started preaching to small groups in his living room in 1980.

A former police officer

Before that he had been an Abilene police patrolman and a member of Herbert Armstrong's World Wide Church of God. He gave up both in the late 1970s, abandoning Armstrong's teachings about the same time he was fired from the police force for carrying beer in his patrol car.

Hawkins appealed that firing, was reinstated and immediately resigned. He had been operating a successful trailer park on T and P Lane in Abilene for several years and had often joked that the police job was ""just a good way to use somebody else's car to drive the money to the bank."

He was ordained by his older brother, Jacob, who already had a small following in a ""House of Yahweh" in Odessa. He then changed his legal name of ""Buffalo Bill" to Yisrayl in 1982 and began his ministry.

At first he garnered little local interest. When he began to expand, placing videotapes on public access television, advertising and selling his publications, he was regarded as just another fervent preacher with a slightly offbeat message.

End-time prophecy

That message was basically an end-time prophecy: The Old Testament God, Yahweh, had chosen two prophets, Hawkins and his brother, Jacob, now deceased. Armageddon was nigh and, after the fall of the world, the two prophets and 24 elders would lead a chosen 144,000 to salvation in Israel.

Jacob and Yisrayl were the ""last and only sons of Yahweh" and the only ones who could lead their followers to the ""Kingdom of Salvation." With Jacob's death in 1991, Yisrayl proclaimed himself ""the anointed one.""

While he did not claim the title ""Messiah," he adopted the definition and never argued with those who chose to call him ""messiah."

Tithing was of utmost importance, as was celebrating the moveable weeklong feasts in spring, summer and fall.

It appealed to some. By the early 1980s a group of about 100 followers had moved to Abilene to be close to their messiah and a few hundred others had been baptized into the House of Yahweh.

Hawkins hit on a plan. He videotaped his preaching, then asked his followers from other cities and states to submit those videos to public access television stations, vastly increasing his exposure. By 1990, his resident following had grown to 200, most of them living in his trailers. At least 800 others were baptized in The House of Yahweh and his mailing list had grown to around 10,000.

Tithes and donations began to pour in. Records from 1993, obtained by the Houston Chronicle, show hundreds of gifts ranging from $15 to $22,000. His publishing company churns out copies of the Book of Yahweh, freely ""given" in return for a donation. A $95 gift nets the donor a copy in genuine leather binding.

And if the believers are too poor to give money, ""Yahweh" will accept their food stamps.

By 1989 Hawkins had followers scattered across the United States as well as in Canada, Trinidad, Jamaica, South Africa and other countries. He caught the attention of the Internal Revenue Service, which audited him in 1992, but found no violations.

In the past three years, Hawkins has expanded even more. He now has his own recording studio and produces his own videotapes. He has his own site on the Internet and has made several attempts to purchase a radio station in Abilene.

He moved his base of operations to the bucolic fields of Eula in 1991, built a sanctuary to seat 1,000, and now holds his ""feasts" there.

Neighbors say the feasts are noisy, obnoxious gatherings. For a week, the normally peaceful days and nights are punctuated by blasts from trumpets and amplified accordion music. A haze of dust hangs over the caliche roads and the surface cracks from the heavy traffic.

A forfeit clause

The complaints are not confined to feast days. Hawkins has purchased other tracts around his original 44 acres and moved his followers onto them. He sells the believers a mobile home, then an unimproved lot for $4,000 an acre. But buyers receive a deed that says they forfeit claim to the property if they break ties with the group.

Eula residents watched as cult members arrived, slowly outnumbering the natives and shrinking the pool of potential homebuyers. Many neighbors of the compound say they fear the cult and will not speak for attribution, but Tom Leamon, whose land is surrounded by Yahweh members, is more vocal.

""My wife and I spent five years designing and building our house out here," said Leamon. ""If it were in Abilene, I could get $200,000 for it. With them around me, nobody would buy it except a Yahweh member and they can't afford it."

Callahan County Chief Tax Appraiser Rod Lewallen said he sympathizes with homeowners in the area, but has not lowered appraisals because the sect continues to buy property, keeping the land values high.

""I have to work with values and I can't justify lowering appraisals as long as the land is selling," said Lewallen. ""I will say this. We're certainly not welcome when we have to go out there to those church grounds to make an appraisal."

Appraisers, sheriff's deputies and other officials all have said they are met with open mistrust when they approach the grounds. Cult members meet them at the gate, then escort them in two or more vehicles while they are inside.

""I don't think I've ever felt as much like a suspicious character," said Callahan County Judge Bill Burns, who was called to rule on a natural death in the compound two years ago.

""They met us at the gate in two cars, drove with us everywhere we went and monitored every move we made on a two-way radio."

Still, for years the group was regarded at worst as a benign nuisance.

Trouble in the House

Now, however, there is trouble in The House of Yahweh.

It began when the messiah's wife, Kay Hawkins, divorced him in the summer of 1994, denouncing him as an adulterer and polygamist who has at least four other ""wives." She was subsequently excommunicated from the cult as were Hawkins' son and daughter.

Hawkins' preaching then took on a more severe tone, alienating some of his more conservative followers. Satan was a woman, he decided in the throes of his divorce. The end was coming sooner than he had thought and he needed more money to prepare the temple in Israel.

The pastor's ex-wife and former elders from his group said Hawkins and several of his elders had already begun practicing polygamy in 1993, but had not acknowledged it to the rest of the congregation.

Before broaching the subject, Hawkins conversed with Utah polygamists. Among those were Alex Joseph, a man with nine wives and 20 children.

Hawkins then used Joseph as an example and published his own text, "Reconsidering Yahweh's Laws of Slavery and Marriage," in which he sang the praises of polygamy, cited biblical passages to support it and explained ""slavery" to Yahweh.

""Recently I had the opportunity to speak with a man who has had NINE WIVES for over twenty years," wrote Hawkins, with his characteristic use of capital letters. ""He informed me that this lifestyle is the IDEAL Way to Live. He said there is always JOY among the wives."

""That's sure as hell not true," said Alex Joseph. ""I remember talking to the guy, but I never told him all nine of 'em were happy at once."

Hawkins times 100

Next, Hawkins' followers began legally changing their names to ""Hawkins" and piercing their ears. More than 100 cult members have filed name changes and taken out passports in Taylor and Callahan counties in the past six months. Roughly that same number paid $7 each to have an ear pierced in a ceremony to signify their slavery to ""Yahweh."

Most recently there has been dissent within the group. A few dozen formerly devoted members have left, telling tales of forced polygamy and slavery. A woman without a husband is regarded as subject to adultery and unworthy to gain salvation. As a result, the former members said, both men and women are pressured into the multiple marriages and at least eight such polygamous groups are present in the sect.

The ear-piercing, they say, signifies slavery to Yisrayl Hawkins and the name changes are in preparation for a planned mass exodus to Israel, where Hawkins will build the vast temple.

Weapons, food buried

They tell of stockpiled food, of massive trailers of rice and beans buried under the compound's rocky soil. They say there have been caches of weapons kept there, brought in by Wisconsin cult members who are active in the violent, anarchic Posse Comitatus. Those weapons are said to have been rifles packed in 55-gallon drums of Cosmoline lubricant and, again, buried.

And many of the three dozen or more former House of Yahweh members who remain in the area -either because they have relatives in the group, or because they spent their savings with Hawkins and lack the funds to relocate - say they fear their former brethren.

Law enforcement agencies have begun looking at the cult. Some, like Abilene police detective Lee Reed, acknowledge that they have gathered information about the group, but will not discuss it. Reed would say only that ""the information I have about them is just too sensitive."

Others, like Callahan County District Attorney Allen Wright, said they worry that rifts within the cult could lead to internal violence. FBI agents say they have received several calls from frightened former members and from some still in the group, but no information that would involve a federal offense.

Privately, sources in the FBI said that government restraints, drawn tighter after the tragic fire at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, have prevented them from gathering more information on The House of Yahweh and other cults.

And in Berkeley County in South Carolina, sheriff's detective John Plitsch has picked up the investigation of the unsolved March 1992 slaying of cult member Ray Edgin.

Edgin, 44, a former Army Special Forces soldier, reportedly had told other cult members that he was an FBI informant during a ""feast" at the compound just prior to his death. He then ""blasphemed" Yisrayl Hawkins as a false prophet and was attacked by another man, a former Navy Seal who teaches cult guard members hand-to-hand combat.

Edgin then returned to his home in Goose Creek, S.C., which is near the town where the combat instructor lives. A few weeks later Edgin was found beaten to death in his house trailer.

""All we know is that no instrument was used on him, only hands and feet," said Plitsch. ""And we'd like to talk to this former Navy Seal."

Others, primarily members of the news media, would like to talk to Yisrayl Hawkins, but he has been unavailable for comment. Instead, he sends Shaul and Michael Hawkins, two elders who, until a few months ago, respectively were Paul Schneider and Michael Sheets.

The two paint a docile picture of their group. The name changes and ear-piercing were not meant to signify slavery to Yisrayl Hawkins, they say.

""Nobody was instructed or forced to do either of those things," said Shaul Hawkins. ""The name `Hawkins' corresponds to the Hebrew `Ha kahan' that means `the priest' and it's something we did out of close kinship and deference to Yisrayl.

""The ear-piercing is just a ritual. We do consider ourselves slaves to Yahweh, but not to Yisrayl Hawkins."

`100 percent nonviolent'

The two also contend that:

There have never been large caches of guns stockpiled on the compound. In fact, the two newly named Hawkinses say their group is ""100 percent nonviolent. We would never shoot back even if we were fired upon."

No one from the sect is associated with Posse Comitatus ""or any of these hate groups. If anyone in our group exhibited any tendencies like that, they'd be asked to leave."

There is no massive food stockpile on the grounds.

No one has been excommunicated from the sect.

Polygamy is not part of their belief. There is no polygamy practiced in The House of Yahweh and Yisrayl Hawkins has no wives, has never advocated the practice and has not cited any polygamists as role models for his elders.

There is ample evidence, however, that none of those statements is true. Former followers have pointed out the area where they say barrels of guns and ammunition were buried on the compound, brought in by elder David Mrotek of Manitowoc, Wis., and six other Wisconsin men who professed to be members of Posse Comitatus.

The barrels were removed, they said, after the ATF raid on the Branch Davidians near Waco.

""Yisrayl said Waco was a prelude to the government coming after us," said a former member who requested anonymity. ""He said David Koresh was a great man and his downfall was a sign to us."

Moreover, in 1992 the cult applied to the Texas Board of Private Investigators and Private Security Agencies to have their 18-man guard commissioned as private security agents, certified to carry firearms. They were turned down when officials from Callahan County protested their application.

But one of their members has since obtained a commission as a state instructor to provide training and certification to carry concealed handguns.

Regarding Posse Comitatus ties, the names of cult members Mrotek, Dave Heimerman and Andrew Glick all appear in police intelligence files in Wisconsin.

Sheriff's Sgt. Larry Roth of Shawano County, the birthplace of the posse, confirmed those names and described Mrotek as the former ""right-hand man" of posse founder, Jim Wickstrom.

""We drove them out of a compound here in 1985," said Roth. ""They had guns packed in Cosmoline and buried out there, over 70,000 rounds of ammunition and bomb-making equipment.

""After that, Mrotek tried to set up his own chapter in Manitowoc, but couldn't get it off the ground."

Those same disillusioned members say they have personally contributed thousands of dollars in food that has been buried in trailers or stored above ground on the compound.

`Excommunication'

As for excommunication, a point Hawkins' elders are adamant about, Hawkins' former wife, Kay, her daughter, Margot, and a half dozen others have retained their ""excommunication" documents, signed by the cult's board of elders.

And former elder Darin Jeffries can attest to polygamy.

""I performed one of those multiple marriages and witnessed four others," he said.

Jeffries and his wife, Anah, and their three children left the cult in October. Prior to that, Jeffries had been an elder in charge of the guard. He was one of Hawkins' most trusted followers and was sent to Israel in 1995 to arrange living quarters for Hawkins.

About that same time, Mrotek and Heimerman also visited Israel and set up Hawkins' bank account there.

""Yisrayl Hawkins is a chronic liar, not a messiah," said Jeffries. ""It took me years to figure that out, but when I did, I left.

""I left relatives in that cult. I left friends. Many of them won't speak to me now, but I had to get out."

Before he left, Jeffries said, he was being pressured by Hawkins and other elders to take a second wife. He resisted, he said, even though he had performed multiple marriage ceremonies for others.

Participants in those ceremonies are required to sign an ominous vow never to ""reveal any information to anyone . . . concerning the events that take place here today." Breaking it carries the penalty of ""The Second Death in The Lake of Fire," Yahweh's equivalent of hell.

The vow, said Jeffries, was supplied by Hawkins.

Hawkins, in his tract on polygamy and slavery, goes on to write that ""Yahweh inspired the wisest man on earth in his time (Solomon), to write that THREE are BETTER than TWO and that two are better than one when speaking of marriage."

Hawkins then carries that logic a few steps further to write that ""SEVEN are better than TWO."

Two of everything

In fact, Hawkins seems to be a man with at least two of everything. He has at least two Social Security numbers (one appearing in his divorce records, another in documents granting power of attorney to several of his elders); two passports; five bank accounts (including one in Bank Leumi in Israel); 12 vehicles; several homes (including a waterfront home on Lake Fort, north of Abilene) and, said Jeffries and others, several wives.

What he does not have is second sight. When his brother, Jacob, died in Odessa in 1991, Hawkins reportedly threw himself on the corpse as it lay in state in a funeral home and attempted to raise the man from the dead. When that failed, he altered his prophecy that he and Jacob would preach in the streets of Jerusalem. He omitted Jacob.

He has incorrectly prophesied the deaths of others, including Jeffries, but a number of former members fear his more ardent followers may turn to violence to please their leader.

Jeffries himself was threatened after taking a reporter to the compound. Several men from The House of Yahweh approached him as he was operating a backhoe at work, he said, and one told him, ""I would not shed innocent blood, but your blood is no longer innocent."

Jeffries dismissed the threat, but said he fears what will become of the relatives and friends he left in the group.

""Most of those people out there are good people who were just looking for answers and think they've found them," he said. ""Most of them aren't violent at all and they wouldn't hurt me.

""But Yisrayl Hawkins is misleading those people and he needs to be stopped. They're not going to get into Israel and they're making themselves slaves to a man who's simply using them.