Scary Terri | 5. The White Pill

Summary

The Binge Cases: Scary Terri | Episode 5: The White Pill – Detailed Summary

Release Date: December 30, 2024
Host/Author: Sony Music Entertainment
Series Description: A dark Texas Gothic unraveling the mysterious deaths connected to Terri Hoffman, a spiritual leader in Dallas, Texas.

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1. Introduction

In "The White Pill," the fifth episode of Scary Terri, investigative reporter Jonathan Hirsch delves deeper into the enigmatic world of Terri Hoffman and her influence over her followers, leading to a series of mysterious deaths between 1977 and 1989. The episode sets the stage by highlighting the vastness of the Texas sky as a metaphor for the hidden human dramas unfolding beneath it.

Jonathan Hirsch (00:00): "People talk about the Texas sky. It's big, grand. But there's more to it than that. There's a sense of perspective, awe even, that holds its lovers captive. And under that wide canvas, the human drama plays out small and terrifying below."

2. The Hoffman Case Unfolds

Investigative attorney and former reporter Pete Slover recounts his initial encounters with the Hoffmans' case while working for the Dallas Morning News. He describes Terri Hoffman as a "soft spoken" and "quiet" individual, which contrasted with others' perceptions of her as having a "pretty stiff temper."

Pete Slover (02:43): "I didn't see anything that was obvious that would explain their deaths. But what I did see was Terry Hoffman's name recurring in multiple places."

3. The Goodmans' Tragic Story

The narrative focuses on David and Glenda Goodman, a seemingly successful couple whose lives spiraled under Terri Hoffman's influence. David, a Yale PhD and SMU professor, met Glenda through a Conscious Development meeting officiated by Terry. Their union, initially based on a shared spiritual quest, became deeply entwined with Hoffman's teachings.

Tony Goodman (05:11): "Way in a way. Fairly conservative, but still, I think a hippie at heart, free spirit."

As the Goodmans delved deeper into Terry's philosophy, their reality became distorted. Terry introduced "white pills" purported to elevate spiritual energy, which led the couple into increasing isolation and manipulation.

Terri Hoffman (06:54): "You fear death as well."

4. Descent into Despair

The Goodmans' journals, later examined by Pete Slover, reveal a disturbing transformation. They adopted new identities—Venus and Jupiter—and became engrossed in Terry's apocalyptic visions. Their writings suggest that Terry provided them with drugs during meditation sessions, exacerbating their delusions and pushing them towards a tragic end.

Tony Goodman (09:04): "He was definitely at the point where I'd do anything, she says, because he is incarnation of Jesus."

Their isolation intensified, leading to unexplained behaviors and ultimately, their demise. On November 25, 1989, neighbors discovered the lifeless bodies of David and Glenda Goodman, both having self-inflicted gunshot wounds. The presence of an alarm clock set between them suggested a planned simultaneous death, but inconsistencies like David's glasses remaining on added to the mystery.

Pete Slover (03:39): "It's easy to kind of roll up these series of events into one kind of crazy story. But at the same time you have to think of each one of these victims as being deeply affected and arguably their lives ruined."

5. Legal Struggles and Financial Manipulations

Following their deaths, wrongful death suits were filed against Terri Hoffman by the Goodman children and others. Hoffman’s financial dealings came under scrutiny during bankruptcy proceedings, revealing suspicious transactions, including significant money transfers and questionable property sales. These actions raised alarms about potential money laundering and attempts to evade creditors.

Jonathan Hirsch (25:14): "Conveniently, she was now claiming to be bankrupt. And it wasn't."

6. Other Mysterious Deaths Connected to Terry

The episode broadens its scope by introducing other victims linked to Terry Hoffman:

• Joe Bounds: A psychologist who was murdered shortly after consulting Terry.
• Robin Otstott: Found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after visiting Terry.
• Mary Levinson: Died of a drug overdose in Chicago, a direct follower of Terry.
• Charles Southern: Assistant chairman of an English department who disappeared after leaving the group.

These cases suggest a pattern of manipulation and possible coercion by Terry Hoffman, extending her influence beyond Dallas to other regions.

Pete Slover (12:35): "They never really got to the bottom of how things played out."

7. Climactic Legal Battle and Terry's Bankruptcy

As legal pressures mounted, Terri Hoffman filed for bankruptcy, a move perceived as strategic to avoid substantial financial liabilities from the suits. However, this revelation coincided with further mysterious deaths, deepening suspicions about Terry's intentions and actions.

Terri Hoffman (27:54): "If they would just call off this lawsuit when they find out I don't have all these millions of dollars."

8. The Final Push Toward Exposure

With mounting evidence and public outcry, the authorities began to piece together the extent of Terry Hoffman's manipulations. The episode hints at an impending showdown, where Terry's tactics would be scrutinized, and her reign would face its ultimate challenge.

Jonathan Hirsch (34:59): "She had a lot of followers and she could easily have gone on. The lamb and I go in search of answers. Among the wreckage, there was spiritual deception and plain evil."

9. Conclusion and Teaser for the Finale

"The White Pill" culminates by setting the stage for the series finale, promising to unravel the final layers of Terry Hoffman's deceit and the full extent of her dark influence. The host emphasizes the chilling paradox of victims' deaths being their own choices, despite Hoffman’s manipulative prowess.

Jonathan Hirsch (35:32): "She wasn't about to get caught now."

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Notable Quotes with Timestamped Attribution

• Jonathan Hirsch (00:00): "People talk about the Texas sky. It's big, grand. But there's more to it than that..."
• Pete Slover (02:43): "I didn't see anything that was obvious that would explain their deaths..."
• Tony Goodman (05:11): "Way in a way. Fairly conservative, but still, I think a hippie at heart, free spirit."
• Terri Hoffman (06:54): "You fear death as well."
• Pete Slover (03:39): "It's easy to kind of roll up these series of events into one kind of crazy story..."
• Tony Goodman (09:04): "He was definitely at the point where I'd do anything..."
• Jonathan Hirsch (25:14): "Conveniently, she was now claiming to be bankrupt. And it wasn't."
• Terri Hoffman (27:54): "If they would just call off this lawsuit when they find out I don't have all these millions of dollars."
• Pete Slover (12:35): "They never really got to the bottom of how things played out."
• Jonathan Hirsch (35:32): "She wasn't about to get caught now."

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Final Thoughts

Episode 5, "The White Pill," skillfully weaves a narrative of manipulation, tragedy, and unanswered questions surrounding Terri Hoffman's enigmatic influence. Through meticulous investigation and poignant testimonies, the episode paints a harrowing picture of how one individual's spiritual leadership can lead to devastating consequences. As the series approaches its finale, listeners are left anticipating the uncovering of the final truths behind the Scary Terri cases.

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For those intrigued by this deep dive into true crime and spiritual manipulation, "Scary Terri" is a must-listen. Subscribe to The Binge Cases on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to access all episodes and support the series.

Transcript

[Jonathan Hirsch]

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[Pete Slover]

Hi, my name is Pete Slover and I'm an attorney in Austin, Texas. At the time that the Hoffman case was unfolding, I was a reporter for the Dallas Morning News.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Pete was a cub reporter in the 80s when he joined the paper, and for one of his first big stories, he started looking into Terry and her group. By then, Devereaux Cleaver had drowned Glenn Cooley overdosed Sandra and Luis had driven off a cliff. Don Hoffman had taken his life in a hotel on account of cancer he didn't have.

[Pete Slover]

I didn't see anything that was obvious that would explain their deaths. But what I did see was Terry Hoffman's name recurring in multiple places.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

How could one person seemingly have been in the right place at the right time to benefit from so many deaths, so many suicides?

[Pete Slover]

It's easy to kind of roll up these series of events into one kind of crazy story. But at the same time you have to think of each one of these victims as being deeply affected and arguably their lives ruined, their family members lives ruined by these circumstances. So that's a huge thing.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

So Pete went looking for answers.

[Pete Slover]

I talked to her on the phone.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Terri Hoffman, he called her up. At that point she would have been in her early 50s.

[Pete Slover]

She was very soft spoken, very quiet, and did not betray anything of what other people recounted as something of a. Of a pretty stiff temper.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Pete Slover was particularly interested in what happened to one couple, the Goodmans, and their involvement with Terry, because he actually knew David.

[Pete Slover]

I was a student of David Goodman, who was a professor at Southern Methodist University. He had this kind of big blocky bull haircut that seemed a little bit dated even in the 80s when I knew him. Kind of a Sir Lancelot look going on. And he was kind of funny and light and very, very intellectual.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

His specialty was something new at the time, how to integrate computers into workplaces. He had gotten a PhD at Yale and eventually found himself in Dallas as a professor at smu. His son Tony summed him up this.

[Tony Goodman]

Way in a way. Fairly conservative, but still, I think a hippie at heart, free spirit.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Professionally, David had figured things out. He had a great job, had written a best selling book on economics. But the equation of love was a different matter for him. All that changed when he met Glenda at a Conscious Development meeting. Terry introduced them and later would officiate their wedding. David and Glenda had both led full lives before they met. Glenda had three kids from a prior marriage. David had Tony and his brother Rick. When they met, David's kids had headed off to college.

[Tony Goodman]

So they were two empty nesters. I think they really wanted to believe they were on a spiritual journey, making the world a better place, making the universe a better place.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Terry began to occupy the space left behind by their kids. Together they shared a quest for the meaning of life and most importantly, what happens afterlife, the beyond. It's a journey that led them all the way to the edge of an abyss. By then, they were so desperate and afraid and listening to one voice, one woman who promised them death was not an end. I teach that an individual does not only have one life to live, but many.

[Terri Hoffman]

You fear death as well.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

No, I don't. Could Terry have pushed the Goodmans, like her other followers, to believe that their soul would return to earth someday? That they needn't fear death? From Sony Music Entertainment. This is scary. Terry. I'm Jonathan Hirsch. Chapter 5 the White Pill.

[Lipstick on the Rim Hosts]

Hello, it's your beauty and wellness BFFs and we're here to answer all your burning questions. Skincare, makeup, parenting, and more. We have got you covered. Oh yes, we do. We'll speak with industry insiders, celebrities, and our close friends and give all our honest and unfiltered thoughts. Always listen to Lipstick on the Rim, now on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dan Jones]

This week on this is History in Conversation. Join me, Dan Jones, for an interview with the man, the myth, the legendary Stephen Fry. We'll be talking about the impact of Greek myths on the Middle Ages and get stuck into our favorite and least favorite heroes of legend.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Aeneas is a very annoying hero.

[Dan Jones]

The word that's always attached to him is pious. Whatever the gods tell him to do, whatever a prophet tells him to do, he does it. Search this IS History wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

By the time Tony and his brother Rick left for college, his dad had been involved with terry for over 15 years. This wasn't a flash in the pan thing. He was a true believer. And as the years went on, Tony said his dad's ideas became stranger, more extreme. Terry, it seemed, loomed larger in his worldview. Now.

[Tony Goodman]

He was definitely at the point where I'd do anything, she says, because he is incarnation of Jesus.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

This sounds familiar to me. In the group I was raised in, something similar happened. A guru type figure who started out as a kind of spiritual cheerleader, a life coach. Over the years, he began to cast himself with a wider net. Terry now had the power to control your body, your thoughts. She wasn't just having visions of Jesus. She was Jesus. Jesus.

[Tony Goodman]

He started talking about these pills that Hoffman gave him. That raises your energy to the spiritual level and puts you in touch with God. And that once the world found out about these pills, everything would be different. It was probably about that time I really felt like it was getting too strange.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

By now, both Rick and Tony were out of the house. Glenda and David lived on a beautiful tree lined street near campus in North Dallas. Somewhere along the line, David had stopped talking to his son Rick. Terry had told him not to. This was a giant blood red flag billowing in the breeze before a hurricane. At least to us now, knowing what we know. Saturday, November 25, 1989. It's been a decade since Devereaux Cleaver died on the rocks in Hawaii on Edge Pine Drive in Dallas, near the campus of smu. David and Glenda Goodman's neighbor noticed their dog looking unwell, thinner than it was before. He was concerned because he hadn't seen or heard from the couple in weeks and he wasn't sure if anyone was feeding their animals in what he assumed was their absence.

[Pete Slover]

The neighbors noticed that the dogs were in the backyard and the dogs were looking gaunt and unfed.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

The blinds on the house were drawn shut. Nobody answered when he knocked on the door. So he went around to the side of the house. That's when he saw it. All the blinds in the front of the house were shut. But from around the side, looking into the den, he could see the outline of a body, lifeless and bloodied. What had happened in that house? Had David or Glenda been murdered? They called the police.

[Pete Slover]

They had been dead for some number.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Of weeks, both Glenda and David. Paramedics forced their way into the house. As the door opened, the smell of death and decomposition rushed out so strongly that the two responders threw up on the front lawn, then put on gas masks. Once equipped, they pressed on amidst plumes of black flies swirling in the rank air.

[Pete Slover]

They were discovered dead some serious amount of time after they had killed themselves. And as such, the evidence was degraded to the point that the police just said it could be a murder suicide, it could be a murder murder simultaneously, or it could be simultaneous suicide. They never really got to the bottom of how things played out.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

David and Glenda were found in their den, an alarm clock set between them. Each of them had what appeared to be self inflicted gunshot wounds to the head, each from a small caliber pistol found near their bodies. The alarm clock, I'm guessing, marked out the time they would each pull the trigger side by side, exiting this world together.

[Pete Slover]

They were two searchers who were really, really tortured and went deeper and deeper and deeper into dark places at the very time that they were being persuaded that they were going to light places. And that's what led to their death.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

There were some outstanding questions regarding their deaths. What was the timer used for? And if they had shot themselves point blank in the head, how had David's glasses stayed on? All elements that were hard to have much insight into. The Goodmans had become so isolated and their bodies so completely decomposed by the time they were discovered. Questions did start to emerge about their involvement with Terry, Both from what was unearthed in the diary, but also the money.

[Pete Slover]

They had paid her hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years. They transferred her a significant amount of money in increments up to $40,000 in all. There was more than $100,000 they had given her over probably 10 months. And beyond that, there were notes in their journals about how they needed to get a lawyer to get the deed to their property transferred to Ms. Hoffman. That never actually happened, but it was pretty clear that that was their intent.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

How had the Goodmans ended up killing themselves if they had? What proof was there that Terry had a hand in coercing them to die by suicide? I hoped Tony would help me be able to get to the bottom of it. By the time they died, they were incredibly low. But their spiral started innocently enough. David told his son that he would see things in meditation sometimes things that he would feel compelled to act on, that these were actual communications from God that he needed to trust.

[Tony Goodman]

I think he and Glenda would. And I don't have too many specifics here, would have a meditation, and then they would get these impressions, you know, just whatever they happen to imagine. And then they would go execute on the flight. God told me not to eat corn ever again. And then they would just not eat corn ever again.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

But the ideas that God relayed to him were, of course, not all as harmless as don't eat corn.

[Tony Goodman]

He didn't find himself isolated. I wanted to stay in touch with my father. And to do that, I kind of needed to believe that there was. I didn't want to believe he was. He'd just been involved in a cult his whole life.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

By 1989, David and Glenda had completely cocooned themselves. The blinds were shut for weeks at a time. Nobody came in or out of the house. Some neighbors just thought they were traveling. And it's true they were quite busy during this time, at least according to Glenda's journals. Journals that Pete Slover from the Dallas Morning News eventually was able to read through.

[Pete Slover]

There were also journals that they kept that showed that they were just mentally tortured. But they were rife with and laced through with references to Ms. Hoffman, her spiritual teachings, pagan deities, her whole philosophy of supernatural things.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

It appeared that David and Glenda were engaging in a kind of messed up.

[Pete Slover]

Roleplay in those journals. She adopted the identity of Venus, and he adopted the identity of Jupiter. And then most of their counseling had to do with what Jupiter and Venus would do.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

In one entry, Glenda transcribed the voice of God declaring her and David's new identities.

[Lipstick on the Rim Hosts]

You are no longer David Goodman, son of Alice and Leonard. That person is gone because the programming is totally wiped out.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

And once the Goodmans no longer believed they were themselves, their journals started alluding to the next life, the one that awaited Venus and Jupiter beyond the earthly plane.

[Lipstick on the Rim Hosts]

Terry and Marcus took Jupiter and Venus by the hand and led us to a beautiful, glittering house in the purple realm. It was our house. Terry took us all to the city. A crystal city with many large, beautiful buildings, but very few people. Most are still down in the lower realms.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Purple realms, crystal cities. This all sounded psychedelic, like the Goodmans were in an altered state. And as it turned out, the journal suggested Terry may have been manipulating the couple with drugs. Some journals alluded to Terry providing white pills for meditation sessions, during which the voices of the so called Masters instructed the Goodmans to give Terry material gifts to prove their devotion.

[Lipstick on the Rim Hosts]

The last time we used the pills, we were given this idea. The Masters, Terry especially, gave me the special gift of placing my spirit totally and permanently within my body. At the time, they told David they would give him his spirit totally as soon as he passed the next test regarding money, they instructed David to buy Terry a brand new car, a 1988 Lincoln Continental. We would be told by the Masters which dealer to go to.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

It would seem that Terri didn't just have the couple in her thrall. She was providing drugs. As they spiraled into a state of utter despair.

[Pete Slover]

These journals described increasing confusion, frustration, and then ultimately physical discomfort at how messed up life seemed to them.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

And then things took an even more desperate turn.

[Pete Slover]

And ultimately those journals included talk of bullets.

[Lipstick on the Rim Hosts]

The union of your physical and your spirit is imminent. Do not give in to the lies that they spread that you won't get your spirits. They can stop you by destroying your faith. Ignore all these negative symptoms. Shower, clean up, walk, etc. Keep your mind busy and most important, deny that you have any interference. Keep faith that you will get your spirit soon. Your consciousness can overcome this if you don't give in.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

By then, the Goodmans were distressed and losing hope fast. Adding bullets to their feverish delusions was not going to end well. In another sequence of entries, David asked questions of God. Glenda answered those questions by channeling the voice of the divine. Glenda and David's parts are being read.

[Lipstick on the Rim Hosts]

By actors, just like with the shooting. If you do that, I Can make you a success that is, can make you yourself, your spirit. God, would it be possible for you to make us feel well? God, I don't feel that I can continue. Do you think I'm lying? I know you are not lying.

[Pete Slover]

These were very detailed journals and they were really sad.

[Lipstick on the Rim Hosts]

God, are you just gonna leave us stranded in this bad state? You are not in this bad state. All alone. Even when it appears that you. That we are not talking to you, we are with you. And we are sharing the burden of your karma. And we too feel the hurt and the pain right along with you. We never disclosed this to you before because it was necessary to make you resentful toward us all and also resentful toward Terry in the physical.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

We are. I've got a note. Trying to read the tea leaves of 40 years old journals, but they are riddled with clues. It's clear, at least to me, that Terri could have provided the Goodmans psychedelic drugs. And she certainly made the next life seem much better than the here and now. Terry was their shepherd and she led them to oblivion.

[Lipstick on the Rim Hosts]

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[Jonathan Hirsch]

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[Lipstick on the Rim Hosts]

To the scandal at Lululemon.

[Pete Slover]

You've got this man saying that his.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yoga pants don't work for women because.

[Lipstick on the Rim Hosts]

They'Re too fat to wear them. We've got over 100 episodes ready for your binging pleasure. Listen to Infamous, the gossip show. That's smart.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

What was the last thing that filled you with wonder that took you away from your desk or your car in traffic or your sink full of dishes? As an actor, it's very freeing being part of these shows.

[Lipstick on the Rim Hosts]

You can step in the booth and.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Kind of be anything. Well, for us, and I'm gonna guess for some of you, that thing is anime. Hi, I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lealec Murray. And I'm Leah, President. And welcome to Crunchyroll Presents. The Anime Effect. It's a weekly news show. I literally, when I saw it, when I found out about this, I literally had like a nervous breakdown. In a good way. With the best celebrity guest.

[Dan Jones]

I've never pirated anything, but I'll steal it if I have to. That was how I felt when I started to get really hooked on Black Butler.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Oh, it's coming back.

[Lipstick on the Rim Hosts]

It's coming back.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

So join us every Friday wherever you get your podcasts and watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. Pete was now hot on the trail. There was an article about the Hoffmans in the Dallas Morning News. It seemed every week, David's father Leonard filed a wrongful death suit. And so did Rick and Janet Hoffman. After their father took his own life thinking he had cancer. The walls were closing in. Would this be the end to Terry's reign of terror? The Hoffman certainly hoped so. They've been dealing with CDBMs for 15 years. They'd seen a string of mysterious deaths play out. Their parents divorced, Their father took his own life. But Rick said they kept trying to nail them down for depositions to move the suit forward. And there'd be crickets. She just ghosted. Why? Well, a wrongful death suit is a civil case, not criminal. They wouldn't be able to send her to jail if they won, but they would be able to drain her bank accounts the way she had to her many followers. That is, if she had any money left. And soon she would claim that she did not. Terri Hoffman filed for bankruptcy. It's perhaps the most chilling and unfathomable of paradoxes about Terry. So many followed her gentle prodding in the direction of their own end. And with each of these deaths, there remained a sense of injustice. An injustice no criminal court seemed to be able to remedy. Their deaths were their choice. No matter the influence, no matter the clear incentive Terry had to see many of them go away. So the victims families did only what they could under the law. By 1989, multiple wrongful death suits were filed against Terry.

[Terri Hoffman]

Now it would be so much easier if it would just. If they would just call off this lawsuit when they find out I don't have all these millions of dollars.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Conveniently, she was now claiming to be bankrupt. And it wasn't. A moment too soon, more stories began to emerge of mysterious deaths, disappearances, murder. Four days after Don Hoffman took his life, there was Joe Bounds. She was a young, single psychologist who'd been found murdered in her Dallas apartment. Pieces of her diary had been torn out, leaving a bloody trail. Little sign of a struggle would point to the act being committed by someone she knew. And in her Rolodex, they found Terri Hoffman's information. She'd visited her for consultations. Robin Otstott was a curriculum writer for the Dallas public schools. She told her ex husband she'd contracted viral hepatitis from a banana peel and that things weren't looking good. Within days of visiting Terry, she was found dead in her apartment from a self inflicted gunshot wound in 1987. Meanwhile, Terry had branched outside of Dallas. She started hosting meditation sessions in the Chicago area. Nearly a year after Robin died, a follower of Terri's named Mary Levinson died of a drug overdose in a Chicago hotel. She donated her sizable estate to an undisclosed organization, which her family had feared was Conscious Development. Charles Southern was an important member of cdbms, new and growing group in the Chicago and Evanston area. He went missing after leaving the group and to this day has never been found. His body never recovered. Charles would later be the subject of an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. Terry Hoffman cultivated followers around the country. Among those who joined the Chicago branch of Conscious Development was Charles Southern Jr. Southern was assistant chairman of the English department at local junior college. During his college's winter break in December 1987, Southern planned to spend a couple of weeks in India and was never heard from again. Southern mysteriously disappeared more than seven years ago, and his family believes it may be no coincidence that he was a disciple of Terry Hoffman. The pressure to stop Terry was on.

[Terri Hoffman]

Hello? Hello, Terry. Yes. Hi, Dorothy. Can you hold on a minute? Sure.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

The conversations between Terry and Dorothy continued, mostly about Dorothy's spiritual and sexual development. But this Week, January of 1990, Dorothy asked Terry about herself. What was she up to?

[Terri Hoffman]

I was wondering how things went with you and your legal business.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

She's talking about the wrongful death suits. This was a couple of years before the bankruptcy.

[Terri Hoffman]

Well, we're still in the process, so we're still in the middle of it.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Dorothy asked if there was any way she could help.

[Terri Hoffman]

So we should. We should still send you some energy or. Yeah, we still need energy to see if they'll back out. He says he doesn't think they'll back out because they. They think that I have a lot of money and they think that. That they can get some. That they can get some.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

She told Dorothy that a trial would be expensive, that the kids. This I'm presuming, is meant to be Janet and Rick, would be bled dry by the cost of depositions.

[Terri Hoffman]

Drag it out as long as he can, because the longer he drags it out, the more it's going to cost them. Personal. That's going to be our tactic.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

This isn't the humble servant of God crying foul. I hear a clever strategist, someone who managed to skirt the law long enough. She wasn't about to get caught now.

[Terri Hoffman]

Okay, send them pale blue and then fish specialize or imagine money coming to them. Yeah, okay, so. Well, you can do that for me, too. My train is going to cost Over a hundred thousand dollars. Oh my goodness, yes. All right, we'll do that. Thanks. Now, is this kind of experience, the hard, hard things like this, Is this part of your evolution as well? No, it's BL stuff. It's what stuff? BL stuff. Black war stuff. Oh. And you can't control somebody that's out of the cycle. Like his children are out of the cycle. But they're very, very greedy. They're totally greedy people. Yes.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

You can see how casually the term Black Lords is thrown about in privacy. And as Terri fell deeper and deeper into the fiery pit of controversy, she could tighten her ranks by pointing to the evil in the world. The Black Lords had waged this dreadful battle against her and the group send energy. It happens so often that it's become a cliche. A criminal doesn't get caught in the act. It's oftentimes a small oversight, a slight hiccup. Wrong signature on the right paperwork. That's what the authorities get you on. And Terry, as we've learned, was not exactly a thorough administrator when it came to her many businesses. Okay, everybody got their recorders on. I obtained a copy of the debtors meetings from Terry's bankruptcy. They're called 341 hearings. Basically, when you go into bankruptcy, the government appoints a trustee. In this case, the woman speaking, Molly Bartholow. This is the continuation of the Terry Hoffman 341. Her job was to make sure all the people Terry owed money to had a chance to get their money back. So anyone who claimed that Terry owed the money could appear at a 3:41 meeting. And in a highly unusual turn of events, more than mortgage brokers and credit card companies showed up at this meeting. There were victims, families. Did you already identify yourself? I'm Jim Barclo. Jim Barklow, the lawyer who repped Sandra's brother, Croom Beatty, when he contested her will, and later the Hoffman children in their wrongful death suit. He was given the opportunity to grill Terry in these creditor meetings too. She'd bought a house in Fresno. He wanted to know where she'd gotten the money and how was that house worked? I had bought some trust deeds in California with the part of the money that I received from Sandra Cleaver's death. Something about the coldness with which she answers his question, to use a family member's phrase, gives me chill bumps. Where did you get the money, Terry? From your client's dead sister. Then there was the issue of land in Colorado. What is that person's name? Simon. Roger. Simon. Terry owed a debt on land in Colorado that she sold to a man named Roger. Roger Simon. This is a Roger Simon wrote her a letter wanting to buy part of the Colorado property. Roger Simon, a friend of Terry's, interested in buying her land for $20,000. And I don't know how that calculates in terms of equity or anything along those lines. I mean, obviously we need more information. A boyfriend, more specifically. Their relationship doesn't come up in this meeting, though. But if Terry had a man in her life who was buying up her property as she faced bankruptcy, that meant she appeared to be taking assets off the books publicly. But if privately, he was just keeping it out of view for her at her bidding, well, that was a problem. A problem that potentially amounted to. To money laundering. Soon, people started to question, including victims families, whether Terry was trying to pull a fast one on the federal government. Next time on the finale of Scary Terry. When you hide assets from a bankruptcy court, it is a federal crime. And with Terry's own freedom on the line, a shocking end to two decades of controversy. She has a lot of followers and she could easily have gone on. The lamb and I go in search of answers. Among the wreckage, there was spiritual deception and plain evil.

[Lipstick on the Rim Hosts]

Plain evil and greed. Telling this story will be closure for me.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Unlock all episodes of Scary Terry ad free right now by subscribing to the binge podcast channel. Not only will you immediately unlock all episodes of the show, but you'll get binge access to an entire network of other great true crime and investigative podcasts. All ad free. Plus, on the first of every month, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series that's all episodes all at once. Search for the binge on Apple podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page, not on apple. Head to getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen.

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