Kirtanananda Swami

What the 1996 plea covered. AP reported in 2004 that at his second trial he “entered a guilty plea to the first count of an 11-count indictment. He admitted to mail fraud included in the racketeering count, but he did not admit any connection to the slayings.” Count I was the RICO conspiracy count, whose alleged predicate acts included the two killings (Fourth Circuit, 1995). Earlier descriptions were partial: The New York Times wrote that he “pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering — which included mail fraud and conspiracy to commit both murders — while simultaneously denying his involvement in the murders”, and ISKCON News and e-WV described the plea as mail fraud. The plea agreement and judgment have not been obtained.

Court record. The case was indictment CR 90-87 in the US District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia, tried at Martinsburg in 1991 before Senior Judge Robert R. Merhige Jr., sitting by designation. In the Fourth Circuit: No. 91-5336 (the government’s appeal against his release pending appeal; the release was upheld on 15 July 1991); No. 91-5350, consolidated with the appeals of co-defendants Terry Sheldon (91-5870) and Steven Fitzpatrick (91-5430), decided 1 July 1993 (998 F.2d 1247); and No. 94-5507, decided 20 June 1995 (58 F.3d 78), after which the Supreme Court denied review (No. 95-278, 27 November 1995). Both Fourth Circuit opinions and the Justice Department’s brief opposing Supreme Court review are in the document library. The district court’s docket, the plea agreement and the 1996 judgment are not online (the case predates electronic filing); the finding aid of the Doktorski collection at West Virginia University lists a copy of the indictment (A&M 4646, Box 13, Folder 1). The 1995 opinion notes that the 1993 decision also vacated Sheldon’s convictions and reversed Fitzpatrick’s.

In its account of the trial evidence, the Fourth Circuit records that Daniel Reid consulted Ham before the St. Denis killing, that Ham said killing was permissible under scripture but illegal and directed Reid to Thomas Drescher. The opinion also records that Drescher received $2,500 “authorized by Swami”. Drescher, who was convicted of both killings, testified at the April 1996 retrial that Bhaktipada authorised both killings (“Under the circumstances, it would be best.”) (AP, 1996). Terry Sheldon (Tapahpunja), who had pleaded guilty in 1994, testified at the same retrial that he told Bhaktipada that two devotees were in California with plans to kill Bryant: “He was reflective. Then he turned to me and said, ‘Maybe that’s what Krishna wants.’” (AP, 1996). In an October 2004 letter Drescher reportedly said he had never personally heard Bhaktipada give him an order to kill Bryant; this is known only from a former disciple’s history of New Vrindaban, which quotes the private letter.

In 1994, before the retrial, he told AP: “We are being persecuted. That’s human nature. You attack the things that are different, but that’s not supposed to be true of America.”

What is reported. At Kirtanananda’s 56th birthday festival at New Vrindaban on 6 September 1993, after the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago, his chauffeur told devotees that “the privacy curtain of Bhaktipada’s Winnebago van accidentally opened” during the all-night drive back. When the news spread, the community split “into two nearly-equal camps”, Kirtanananda withdrew to his cabin at Silent Mountain near Littleton, West Virginia, and Radhanath Swami and Devamrita Swami left New Vrindaban after threats from angry disciples. In the outline of his chapter “Pushed Out Completely”, Henry Doktorski, a former disciple who has written a history of New Vrindaban, lists further “confessions” to a delegation of New Vrindaban leaders, each followed by a denial. By July 1994 Kirtanananda had been “pushed out completely” of New Vrindaban.

Not the same matter as the 2000 finding. In 2000 ISKCON’s child-protection office found that he had sexually abused a boy in Malaysia in 1989 and 1991 (see the record on child sexual abuse). The sources reviewed do not say whether either of the 1993 disciples was connected with that case, and nothing should be inferred.

Other accounts. An anonymous page on the critic site harekrsna.org retells the September 1993 story with further details; it is not used here.

In the account given in a multi-volume history of the community, after hearing that Gopinath dasa, “the school teacher and former headmaster of the Nandagram School”, had sexually molested his son, the boy’s father went to Kirtanananda Swami (Bhaktipada) and demanded, “Either that perverted child-molester monster gets kicked out of the community, or I leave.” Bhaktipada “smiles at him and responds, ‘If you put it that way, it looks like you’re leaving.’” The father, who had served the community for 14 years, then took his wife and children away from New Vrindaban (On This Date in History, citing Gold, Guns and God, vol. 3, p. 316). The author’s summary of that volume describes the family’s “hasty departure” in 1983 “because of Bhaktipada’s refusal to discipline a former school headmaster who had sexually molested [the father’s] young son”. His timeline gives the same event under “Late 1983”, citing vol. 3, p. 325 and vol. 4, p. 347.

Gopinath stayed. On 7 April 1984 Gopinath, by then “one of the teachers (Gopinath, formerly the headmaster)” at the Nandagram school, “discovers a new method to help control unruly boys: pinching them under the arms or on the fingernail” (vol. 4, p. 292). He was Kirtanananda Swami’s secretary and treasurer and took the name Radha Vrindaban Chandra Swami in 1986. At the first reunion of former New Vrindaban pupils in July 1993, some were upset that he and Sri Galima dasa, “former headmasters who had abused and sexually molested boys at the school”, were “still living in the community as members in good standing”; after the former students petitioned the community, he was expelled in 1994 or 1995 (vol. 10, pp. 20–21). ISKCON’s child-protection office later reportedly found that he had physically and sexually abused boys at New Vrindaban; that decision has not been seen. His own record is on this site.

An anonymous 2011 list of New Vrindaban figures, published on a critic’s blog years before the book, gives a similar account: it says that the boy’s family had to leave and that Kirtanananda Swami let the father go “to protect his twice fallen former gurukula headmaster”.

Apart from that anonymous list, the exchange is known only from the account of Henry Doktorski, a former New Vrindaban resident who has written a multi-volume history of the community. He does not say how he learned of it, and his two page references differ (p. 316 and p. 325 of vol. 3). Kirtanananda Swami was not charged over it, and no response from him to this account has been found; he died in 2011. The boy and his family are not named here.