© Beth Nakamura | The Oregonian/OregonLive
It was an incredible chapter of Oregon's past when worshipers of the Indian guru put down stakes at an empty cattle ranch, battled with the locals, poisoned many and plotted to kill people standing in their way.
Here are some of the more intriguing excerpts from 13 pages found in a folder hidden in a locked file cabinet from the commune and made public here for the first time.
The handwritten notes are in different colored ink, different styles and sometimes highlighted in pink or green.
The margins of the papers list names of followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, with information jotted beside each one: Anupa, Devaraj, Devika, Dharmakaya, Suburo.
It could be that those are the people who provided a particular account or who were involved in the actions described, but it's hard to tell.
The authors repeatedly mention members of the commune's inner circle of administrators: Sheela, Puja, Ava, Devarish.
Some of the pages list years: 1982, 1983, summer and fall of 1984 and June 1985.
Passages from the papers are followed here by an explanation of actual events based on news accounts and court documents from the time.
© Beth Nakamura | The Oregonian/OregonLive
Poisonings
"Puja asked lab to culture salmonella. Parambodhi was lab tech. Asked him to teach her to make salmonella. Lots of secret stuff going on Puja had lab in Chinese laundry secretly. Lots of things happening. People going to Dalles. Ava called in to Sheela told we have to destroy the Dalles. One enlightened Master worth 10,000 asleep people."
Ma Anand Sheela, the former top aide to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and Ma Anand Puja, the former secretary of the Rajneesh Medical Corp. clinic at the ranch, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to tamper with consumer products after an estimated 750 people became ill in August and September 1984. They had eaten at restaurants in The Dalles, where Rajneeshees had put salmonella bacteria on food.
Puja served almost 39 months in prison, including time spent in a German jail before she was extradited to the United States in late 1985.
Sheela served two years and five months in prison for attempted murder, arson, immigration fraud and The Dalles poisoning.
Ma Anand Ava was one of Sheela's trusted operatives. Parambodhi was the laboratory technician at the Rajneesh Medical Corp. who helped Puja in culturing the salmonella.
© Beth Nakamura | The Oregonian/OregonLive
"Puja distributed drugs to keep people 'happy,' out of pain, Asleep. "
"Puja asked if could obtain rat poisoning..."
"Puja prescribed Haldol because 'psychopathe & could murder someone' No general knowledge of treatment."
"Puja asked for syringes day she left (got them)"
"Puja had pharmacy key/schedule drugs w/o scripts/ "
"Puja would request medications for J.G. (valium, percodin)...Puja frequently got NO2 for J.G''
Puja comes up many times in the papers as the commune chemist or nurse who provided drugs to keep people in check at the ranch. The Filipino-born nurse practitioner conducted medical experiments at the commune. Jesus Grove (J.G. above) was the housing compound where Sheela and other top Rajneesh disciples lived.
Federal prosecutors had heard stories that the Bhagwan loved to use nitrous oxide (actually N2O), commonly known as laughing gas.
© Beth Nakamura | The Oregonian/OregonLive
"6/85 meeting Sheela said DR was going to kill Bhagwan. Everyone freaked out. Said they were going to poison DR during festival. Ava said no. Sheela told her to shut up."
"Sees DR get up. Shanti B near him when he stands up. Other 3 in back. DR foaming at the mouth. Put him in ambulance. Takes him to RMS. Havidasi told Ava that DR said that someone injected him with something. Shant B real excited that day... DR injected with high dosage of adrenalin."
Sheela had sent another woman to stab the Bhagwan's personal physician, Swami Devaraj, referred to above as "DR,'' with a syringe filled with adrenaline out of fear Deveraj was using his access to the guru to undermine her.
Ma Shanti Bhadra, also known as Shanti B, plunged a hypodermic needle into Devaraj during a ranch celebration, almost killing him. Bhadra, born Catherine Jane Stork, was convicted of attempted murder in 1986 and served almost three years in prison. She was later convicted in the conspiracy to kill Oregon's U.S. Attorney Charles Turner, a 1985 plot that was aborted, sentenced to time served and five years of probation.
© Beth Nakamura| The Oregonian/OregonLive
"Helen Byron trial - Ava sent to Portland to follow her & poison her. Sheela told her to do it. Puja gave her the stuff...they failed, Sheela really pissed off."
A federal jury in Portland in May 1985 awarded $1.7 million to Helen C. Byron, 66, of Santa Fe, a former Rajneesh disciple, in her suit against Rajneesh Foundation International. In 1980, Byron had lent the sect nearly $310,000, a sum that Sheela later claimed was a contribution. The jury found that Sheela deliberately deceived Byron. Sheela described Byron's suit as part of a government plan to destroy the Rajneeshees.
© Beth Nakamura | The Oregonian/OregonLive
"Sagun told Jagruti to poison Rosemary McGreer. Samadhi called Sheela said Jags too freaked out message to drop it. Jagruti to Sheela later she wouldn't do it."
McGreer, who still lives on a six-generation family farm that abutted the Rajneesh ranch, was a critic of the commune and went on "The Merv Griffin Show" in mid-1982. Sheela also was a guest on the show. That October, Rajneesh Foundation International sued McGreer for defamation, highlighting her claims that donations to the church benefited only a few Rajneeshees and that Rajneeshee children saw their parents only on weekends.
The suit went nowhere, and McGreer countersued for defamation, winning $75,000 that she never received.
"I'm sure that's the reason,'' McGreer said in a recent interview, adding that she never heard of the plot to poison her before.
Ma Anand Jagruti pleaded guilty to a federal wiretapping charge and a state felony charge of election fraud.
© Beth Nakamura | The Oregonian/OregonLive
"It was injected nitely into the S.A.H. beer by Puja using a large syringe at Jesus Grove... Probably used more specifically on individual problem cases through tea administered by 'moms.'"
In an attempt to overthrow the Wasco County government, the Rajneeshees bused in thousands of homeless people under the auspices of a humanitarian effort they called "Share A Home" (S.A.H. for short) and had them register to vote. But when the newcomers started to disrupt the commune, the Rajneesh inner circle drugged them with Haldol, injecting the tranquilizer into their beer. Sheela lived at Jesus Grove.
© Beth Nakamura | The Oregonian/OregonLive
"kept off books/don't attach slips - book wouldn't show / Devam & Puja pulled J.G. charts to change for INS raid."
"blue files - kept in special cabinet/ knew for people w/INS problems one nite helped remove time sections/mainly 'old timers'/removals shredded/Puja there but not helping..."
Federal officials launched a vast immigration fraud investigation into the Bhagwan and his followers. Five disciples pleaded guilty to conspiracy to arrange sham marriages between U.S. citizens and foreign sect members. The Bhagwan pleaded guilty to two counts of immigration fraud and paid a $400,000 fine before he was deported. At the time, Oregon's U.S. Attorney Charles Turner said the Rajneeshees engaged in the "largest recorded marriage fraud in the United States,'' involving more than 400 sham marriages.
© Beth Nakamura | The Oregonian/OregonLive
"Puja told Ava to pick up P.W. Said she was going to give him a test. Puja injects him with Sodium Penthathol. Julian, Sheela, Savita, Anugiten, Dipo around to talk to P.W. They interrogated him. Puja put him on I.V. valium. He was out for 3 days. Puja wrote fake heart letter. He was shipped out.
Under page heading "S.A.H. - William Allen":
-- "psychotic. Doctors decided to send him out. Allen couldn't function. He was on amatrytaline. Shipped out found dead. died from exposure."
-- "William Allen: Filled several scripts. found with menatripaline in system, prescribed given enough for 2 day supply. got 6 tabs (would take 14 - 20).'" and "Shunyo: William Allen - had seen him but he did not have lethal dose of Elavil."
Two men were recruited to the commune and were later "shipped out" of the ranch. Felton Walker, spelled "Phelton" in the notes (P.W. above), was given so-called "truth serum" and interrogated by Sheela and others after information surfaced that he talked about kidnapping the guru.
William Allen was pushed out of the ranch and sent on a bus to Portland after he was given an anti-psychotic drug. Allen, 28, was found dead of exposure behind a restaurant in Government Camp in 1984. His mother Evelyn Allen filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Ma Anand Puja in 1989. An autopsy revealed Allen died of hypothermia, although a deputy medical examiner was quoted in wire service reports at the time as saying that a quantity of Elavil, an anti-depressant, in his body "contributed to his death.''
According to federal court records, a judgment was entered on March 30, 1989, awarding Allen's mother $500,000 in a wrongful death lawsuit she filed against Puja. Her lawyer, now 70, said he remembers there was a settlement but doesn't remember if the judgment was ever paid. The mother has died.
© Beth Nakamura | The Oregonian/OregonLive
"Samadhi told about how she'd go and got some stuff all over her, she did something at Frohnmeyers (sic) house.''
Federal agents said at a bail hearing that they'd been told by a former Rajneeshee, Ava Avalos, about a plot to assassinate the state's attorney general, Dave Frohnmayer, as well as Oregon's U.S. Attorney Charlies Turner.
The recent Netflix documentary series, "Wild Wild Country," reported that animal innards were found on the driveway to Frohnmayer's house, suspected to have been left there by Rajneeshee followers.
-- Maxine Bernstein
mbernstein@oregonian.com
503-221-8212
@maxoregonian
Allegedly also,'The Rajneesh Cult' were responsible for dumping the several tons of MDMA that fell on London in the late eighties which pretty much gave birth to the rave scene.
There was an online confessional by a couple of Oshos viz. that latter issue but it seems to have vanished from the internet.