Leader of cult-like group charged with murder claimed God spoke through her, former member says

Clara Harter 

Los Angeles Times 

February 6, 2026

Shelley Bailey “Kat” Martin taught members of her secretive religious group that she was like the character Neo from the Matrix — awoken from this realm by God and transformed into a perfect being, according to testimony from a former member.

The self-proclaimed “Prophetess” appeared in San Bernardino Superior Court on Thursday for a preliminary hearing alongside four other defendants to face murder charges in the death of a 4-year-old boy and a former group member. The other defendants are her husband, Darryl Muzic Martin, 58, current member Rudy Moreno, former member Ramon Ruiz Duran Jr. and former member Andre Thomas, prosecutors say.

The Martins are leaders of His Way Spirit Led Assemblies, a religious group that imposed excessive control over members’ lives and finances and operated for years across the Inland Empire, prosecutors say.

Shelley Martin, 62, Rudy Moreno, 43, and Ramon Ruiz Duran Jr., 44, are charged with murdering former member Emilio Ghanem, who disappeared in 2023 shortly after parting ways with the group. Shelley Martin, Darryl Martin and Andre Thomas are charged with murder in the death of 4-year-old Timothy Thomas while he was in the temporary custody of the Martins in 2010, according to the Colton Police Department. They have all pleaded not guilty.

Attorneys representing the defendants declined to comment to The Times or did not respond to requests for comment.

Former group member Kelli Byrd testified for two hours on Thursday, providing a rare glimpse inside the religious group that had operated in secret for decades.

Byrd told the court that Shelley Martin referred to herself as Prophetess Kathryn, claimed she was a physical embodiment of the Holy Spirit and that God spoke directly through her.

When the group gathered for worship a “gift of prophecy” would occur through Shelley Martin. Her body would start thrashing and her voice would become deep and low as she shared “a word from the throne of God,” Byrd said.

Byrd’s description of the powerful prophetess differed dramatically from the sullen appearance of Shelley Martin in court Thursday, where she sat glumly in a forest green jumpsuit, her long blond curls grown out to reveal dark black roots. Her husband and the other defendants in the case watched Byrd‘s testimony in silence from their respective seats.

His Way Spirit Led Assemblies was founded in Nashville in 1998, relocated to California in 2000 and has been located in various homes in the Inland Empire since around 2004, Byrd said.

Former members and law enforcement have described the group as cult-like.

“You had no choices in anything,” Anthony Duran, who told The Times in an interview that he escaped the cult in 2020 at age 20. “You can’t go here. You can’t go there. You can only go to work and come home.” Anthony Duran is the nephew of Ramon Ruiz Duran Jr., who is charged with murder.

The group has a decades-long history in the Inland Empire, where it has been connected to two alleged murders and the disappearance of a third person.

In 2010, 4-year-old Timothy Thomas died of a ruptured appendix while in the custody of the Martins at one of the group’s homes in Colton, authorities said. Anthony Duran said the Martins didn’t believe in hospitals and said God would cure illness.

Colton police suspected that neglect played a role in Timothy’s death and sought charges against the Martins in 2010, but the district attorney’s office declined to file any. At the time, group members were uncooperative and gave conflicting testimony, according to Colton Police Sgt. Shawn McFarland.

Since then, former group members have revised their statements, saying that their initial testimony was made under duress from the Martins, he said.

In 2019, member Ruben Moreno was reported missing from the group’s Claremont home. Then, in 2023, longtime member Emilio Ghanem vanished shortly after severing ties with the group, authorities said.

The investigation into Ruben Moreno’s disappearance remains ongoing, and no charges have been filed in that case, according to Claremont Police Capt. Robert Ewing.

Ghanem joined the group in 1998 in Nashville and followed the Martins to California, where he later worked for the group’s pest control business Fullshield, Byrd testified.

Anthony Duran, the member who said he escaped in 2020, said male members of the group were expected to work long hours at Fullshield for minimal pay. Byrd said in court that the Martins never did any work for Fullshield.

Anthony Duran said he was paid $12 an hour and required to work shifts of up to 17 hours. He said he was paid in checks but was then told he wasn’t allowed to cash them, leaving him without enough money to purchase Gatorade or deodorant. Duran did not testify on Thursday, but shared details of his time with the group in an interview with The Times.

After years of labor, Duran said he was able to persuade the Martins to allow him to finance a work truck in his own name. With a mode of transportation secured, he left under the cover of night in early 2020, eager to live a life free of their control, he said.

Ghanem left His Way Spirit Led Assemblies in April 2023, moved home to Nashville and founded his own pest control company, his sister Jennifer Ghanem told The Times. In May 2023, he vanished in Redlands while visiting the area in an effort to reconnect with former clients.

The truck he had rented during the trip was found burned in the Mojave Desert in 2025, according to the Redlands Police Department.

The group had largely escaped public scrutiny until last year when three police departments — Redlands, Colton and Claremont — realized they each had open cases connected to the organization and doubled down on efforts to solve them, ultimately resulting in five arrests.

The Martins were arrested in December as was longtime member Rudy Moreno, who is the brother of missing person Ruben Moreno, and former member Andre Thomas, who is the father of the boy who died, authorities said. Ramon Ruiz Duran Jr. was arrested in Nashville and extradited to San Bernardino in January, according to the Redlands Police Department.

Anthony Duran said he waited until the Martins were behind bars to say anything about the group because he feared for his own safety.

“I’m so grateful they’re getting what they deserve,” he said, “because they really thought that they could go in and destroy people’s lives, take all their money and take them away from their families and think that they can get away with that.”

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-02-06/leader-of-cult-like-group-charged-with-murder-claimed-god-spoke-through-her-former-member-says

What is coercive control?

What is coercive control?
Coercive control involves deliberate, repeated patterns of physical or non-physical abuse used to hurt, scare, intimidate, threaten or control someone. 
Behaviour can include:
• Limiting freedom or controlling choices
• Harassing, monitoring and stalking 
• Shaming, degrading or humiliating 
• Social isolation 
• Threats, violence and intimidation 
• Emotional, financial or sexual abuse
• Systems abuse, such as making false reports to authorities
It carries a maximum sentence of seven years. The law currently only applies to behaviour after July 2024 towards current or former intimate partners.

Yamagami Sentencing Reveals Japan’s Troubled Response to Religious Cults

Kitō Masaki 

Nippon

February 4, 2026

In January 2026, Yamagami Tetsuya was sentenced to life for the July 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzō, which shone light on the Unification Church’s ties to leading politicians and the plight of second-generation followers. A lawyer with experience in cases involving religious cults examines the ruling.

Life Sentence for Yamagami

On January 21, Yamagami Tetsuya was sentenced to life imprisonment for the July 2022 murder of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzō. Courts typically exercise judicial discretion in sentencing, departing from what prosecutors demand, but in an unusual move, the Nara District Court followed the prosecution’s recommendation in full in passing down punishment.

One factor that made this case different was the array of charges Yamagami faced. Along with the main charge of murder, Yamagami was also tried for violating Japanese laws prohibiting the possession, manufacture, and discharge of firearms, as well as property damage. The defense attempted to win acquittal on the firearms and weapons manufacturing counts, arguing that Yamagami’s homemade weapon did not fall under applicable statutes. Acquittal on these counts would have bolstered their case for limiting sentencing to no more than 20 years, but the court rebuffed this line of argument, clearing the way for a harsher punishment.

Another factor was Yamagami’s perceived unrepentance. In cases where a court grants the prosecution its sentencing request, the judge will typically consider the defendant as not having shown adequate remorse or not apologizing for the crime. In passing judgement on Yamagami, the bench noted that he had demonstrated neither an understanding of the danger of his actions nor the gravity of taking another human’s life, and so could not be said to have reached a sufficient level of remorse.

While Yamagami did express regret, the court in coming to its decision seems to have put greater weight on both his failure to apologize directly to Abe’s widow Akie and to make any attempt to atone for the killing, such as through financial restitution.

Defendant’s Background Dismissed

Another critical point in Yamagami’s sentence was the court brushing aside his troubled background as a second-generation follower of the Unification Church, which was central to the defense’s case. The ruling acknowledged that Yamagami, who stated that his motive stemmed from the financial duress his family suffered at the hands of the UC, may have “harbored intense anger” toward the organization and its affiliates (including politicians like Abe, whom he viewed as having supported the church) and a desire to make them suffer, but it stressed that there was “a significant leap” between those feelings and planning and carrying out murder with a homemade weapon. Judging the leap too great, the court dismissed the defendant’s upbringing as not having a substantial influence on his crime.

This was a surprising development given the growing understanding of how childhood trauma can profoundly influence the trajectory of a person’s life. This connection is particularly relevant in lawsuits by second-generation followers against religious groups like the UC, as demonstrating the long-lasting effects of adverse childhood experiences enables claimants to win greater compensation for their suffering.

At the heart of Yamagami’s case was his decision to assassinate the former prime minister rather than directing his deep-seated resentment at the UC itself, or its leaders. Abe had connections to the Unification Church, and the court weighed whether the killing was a leap too far or an inevitable outcome of childhood trauma, with the judge ultimately choosing the former. A likely factor in this outcome was the failure of the defense to present expert testimony from psychiatrists or other mental health experts in order to clearly link the suffering inflicted on Yamagami by the church during his formative years with his later crime.

South Korea and the Dissolution Order

Looking at Yamagami’s case, one must also consider the potential impact of the investigation of the Unification Church in South Korea, where the organization is based. Of particular interest are a raft of documents known as “TM Reports” seized by investigators while probing the UC’s attempts to influence former Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s administration. The reports, linked to the church’s leader Han Hak-ja, who goes by the title “True Mother,” shed light on the UC’s connections to leaders in Korea, but are also purported to contain extensive information about the church’s relationships with Japanese politicians. Han has already been arrested and indicted, and depending on how the South Korean investigation unfolds, more of the nature and extent of Abe’s ties to the UC may come to light.

An incident that has drawn much scrutiny involves a video message Abe made for an event organized by a church-affiliated group in September 2021 in which he expresses his respect for Han. Many aspects of Abe’s relationship with the Unification Church remain unclear, which leads to the question of what impact a full understanding of the UC’s political connections would have had on the course of the Yamagami trial. The lack of such insight is deeply regrettable for criminal proceedings, which should be unwavering in the pursuit of the truth.

Political connections are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the problems surrounding the Unification Church that Abe’s killing brought to the fore, most of which remain unresolved three and a half years after the incident. Yamagami’s sentencing is unlikely to have an immediate effect on litigation over the dissolution of the UC, which the Tokyo District Court ordered in March 2025. Following a church appeal, the case went to the Tokyo High Court, which is expected to issue a new ruling in March 2026; for now, liquidation of the UC’s considerable assets, through which victims would receive compensation, cannot proceed. It is worth contemplating the potential impact on Yamagami’s trial had the dissolution order been finalized and the full extent of the church’s harmful activities been exposed.

Failing Second-Generation Victims

In the wake of Abe’s shooting, the Japanese government quickly passed legislation prohibiting the unjust solicitation of funds by religious organizations, dealing a blow to the coercive fund-raising tactics of the UC. The law, however, is short-sighted. It focuses primarily on the harm inflicted on followers like Yamagami’s mother, whose massive donations to the church ruined her family financially. What is more, it only vaguely addresses the deceptive tactics that drew her and others in in the first place in its demand that organizations give “sufficient consideration” to followers when soliciting donations. Subsequently, it provides almost no protections for second-generation victims.

The law was subject to review after two years, but in September 2025 the Consumer Affairs Agency announced that while it would continue implementing the legislation, it saw no need for revision at present, effectively shelving its obligations to victims. Consumer protection efforts must extend to those families still struggling, yet the agency has shown little willingness to carry out this role, leaving second-generation victims like Yamagami to fend for themselves. Moreover, compensation standards for abuse victims under the Child Abuse Prevention Act, which has yet to be updated to reflect current situations, remain woefully inadequate.

“Foreign Agents”

Legislators have also been lax in taking up the issue of political infiltration. The recent introduction of anti-espionage legislation has sparked a modicum of debate over lobbyist regulation, but in light of the Unification Church’s success at currying favor with leading politicians, a brazen case of foreign influence in Japanese politics, there needs to be a more concerted effort to address such risks. Japan must draw up legislation in the vein of the US Foreign Agents Registration Act and similar laws adopted by European governments that impose disclosure obligations on individuals representing foreign interests. In the United States, for instance, FARA was key to the 1984 imprisonment of Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, on tax evasion charges.

Hindsight is 20/20, but it strikes me that so much suffering could have been avoided had those in power in both Japan and South Korea not waited to act against the UC. Had the South Korean government launched its investigation into the church earlier, Abe might never have sent his 2021 video message, and the shooting itself might never have occurred. If victim relief for former members and others had not been neglected in Japan, the Unification Church would likely not have been able to funnel donations attained through coercive means toward political influence operations in Japan and South Korea. The last point is a strong argument for the need to strengthen legislation against money laundering in both countries.

More importantly, though, there needs to be better appreciation of the need for victim relief and understanding of political infiltration by cults if effective countermeasures are to be put in place. Cults like the Unification Church are a universal threat, and France provides an example in having drawn up 10 criteria that focus on deviant behavior of sectarian movements that threaten public safety or human rights.

Aum’s Long Shadow

Finally, it is difficult not to see the Yamagami case in terms of the legacy of Aum Shinrikyō. Since the shocking sarin attack on the Tokyo subway by the religious cult in 1995, Japan has spent the ensuing three decades in a daze in terms of dealing with cults, with no effective countermeasures being put in place. This failure has enabled cultlike religious organizations to continue to prey on the innocent. In fact, Japan has yet to work out why the sarin attack happened in the first place or how to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring in the future.

In finding answers to these questions, Japan should draw on foreign legal frameworks like France’s anticult laws. The harm and suffering inflicted on second-generation members of cults is an ongoing human rights crisis that can no longer be ignored.

Some have suggested that Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae timed her dissolution of the lower house of the Diet on January 23 to head off renewed scrutiny of ties between the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the Unification Church in the wake of the Yamagami verdict. I believe, however, that it may instead thrust the UC issue back into the spotlight. The long absence of cult countermeasures is a responsibility shared by society as a whole, including the media. The election may well finally force Japan to contemplate the lack of action in the 30 years since Aum.

(Originally published in Japanese. Banner photo: Former Prime Minister Abe Shinzō and former US President Donald Trump delivering video messages to a September 2021 event hosted by the Universal Peace Foundation, an organization affiliated with the Korean Unification Church. From the UPF website.)

Kitō Masaki

Head attorney and managing partner at Link Law Office. Born in Yamaguchi Prefecture in 1960. Earned his PhD in law from Osaka University. Member of the Consumer Affairs Committee of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, where he has served on panels related to consumer protection and cult-related fraud. Has been involved in cases involving the Unification Church and other religious cults.

https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d01205/yamagami-sentencing-reveals-japan%E2%80%99s-troubled-response-to-religious-cults.html