White Supremacists, Legal, Zendik Farm, Polygamist, False Memories
A 22-year-old white supremacist was sentenced Tuesday to life in federal prison for killing a woman and injuring three others in a shooting at a Southern California synagogue in 2019, adding to the life term he received three months earlier in state court.
John T. Earnest declined to speak in a courtroom full of victims, families and congregants. In state court, his attorney said he wanted to speak but a judge refused, saying he didn't want to give a platform for his hate-filled speech.
Earnest's attorney, Ellis Johnston III, said his client acknowledged his actions were "inappropriate," a statement that was greeted with skepticism by prosecutors. Peter Ko, a federal prosecutor, said Earnest's show of contrition came shortly after the shooting in a recorded phone call to someone else.
"Helen Zuman and Lyndon McLeod had an unusual connection: they were indoctrinated into the same polygamist cult, and they both escaped, but not at the same time.
In fact, they just missed each other back then. McCleod left the Zendik Farm cult in North Carolina in the spring of 1999 and she joined that fall. Zuman's book "Mating in Captivity" is a memoir about her experience with Zendik, a group which controlled sex between its members. Zendik philosophy banned monogamy because, as cult founder Wulf Zendik wrote, "possessive attitudes about sex lead to jealousy, hate, violence, murder."
Some of McLeod's writings echoed these thoughts. He believed that society should revert back to tribal masculine-led society. "I want a return to Alpha Kings and their harems," he wrote in his blog. "We are sexually dimorphic and that means the alpha - the badass – gets all the women and the other 90% don't get any at all."
Zuman, a Harvard-graduate, first met McLeod when he contacted her in 2008 after reading Mating in Captivity. The two had spotty communication until 2018, when he published the first of three volumes of his book, Sanction, which he wrote under the pseudonym "Roman McClay."
For months, Zuman and McLeod's friendship blossomed as they shared experiences, philosophies and jokes over long phone calls, texts and emails.
"I knew him as Lyndon," said Zuman, who explained there was a mystical reason behind the chosen pen name. "Roman came from a play on words for 'roman a clef', a kind of novel that's based on real life. In his book, he used his own real name and he used the real names of characters he knew from Zyndek."
Zuman said that McLeod's character kills 46 people, one of whom is named "Michael Swinyard" -- whom he actually did shoot and kill Monday evening. "In the book there's at least one scene where Lyndon murders people in a tattoo parlor," said Zoman. Why did the character kill people? "As far as I know he did it because he wanted revenge. He wanted to avenge Lyndon," Zuman said.
Wednesday, McLeod's family announced in a statement that they had been estranged for a number of years, explaining, "We lost our son and brother years ago." But according to Zuman, the feeling was mutual, "He had beefs with his father, how he treated him and how he was raised," she said. "He looked down on his family as being normal, pedestrian and sort of sold out and mainstream."
Summary: Researchers have developed new techniques that can correct false memory recollections without damaging true autobiographical memories.
"The study highlights – for the first time – techniques that can correct false recollections without damaging true memories. It is published by researchers from the University of Portsmouth, UK, and the Universities of Hagen and Mainz, Germany.
There is plenty of psychological research which shows that memories are often reconstructed and therefore fallible and malleable. However, this is the first time research has shown that false memories of autobiographical events can be undone.
Studying how memories are created, identified and reversed could be a game changer in police and legal settings, where false memories given as evidence in a courtroom can lead to wrongful convictions.
According to Dr Hartmut Blank, co-author of the research from the University of Portsmouth's Department of Psychology, "believing, or even remembering something that never happened may have severe consequences. In police interrogations or legal proceedings, for instance, it may lead to false confessions or false allegations, and it would be highly desirable, therefore, to reduce the risk of false memories in such settings."
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