Elected through Terror

Untitled Part 7

They had already poisoned a County Commissioner and County Judge by offering them water laced with Salmonella bacteria.

In the summer of 1984 the County Commissioners had taken their annual trip to the ranch, prior to a festival that would have thousands of sannyasins come to the ranch, to assess what was being done. On the way down they stopped at the little general store/cafeteria at Antelope. They were all given water to drink.

The Rajneesh placed the salmonella bacteria in the water of these two commissioners; the third one they felt was more inclined to support them so he received a germ free glass. They, of course, didn't feel the effects right away.

They drove down to the ranch where they parked their vehicle in the parking lot of the visitor center. They were then escorted around the ranch, in one of the Rajneesh vehicles, and told how the upcoming festival would be handled.

When they returned to their car they found they had a flat tire. The weather was hot and changing the tire was hot and sweaty work, the County Judge was thirsty - all were offered water, but only the Judge accepted, it was another glass of poison.

Both men got sick. The one, who had only one dose, was able to 'tough' it out and as he told me, 'work through it.' The County Judge almost lost his life as he became very ill and finally listened to his wife when she insisted he go to the hospital - that saved his life. In back tracking what he did and where he may have gotten the bacteria he came to the conclusion that the Rajneesh had poisoned him, they denied it and there was no proof.

The District Attorney of Jefferson County was also a victim who almost died from poisoning. I am still shaking my head over that fact - he had been a strong proponent of trying to work with them, but he also was a man of integrity and that might have been what upset them.

In September 1984 Carla and I, along with our children, decided to go to Dufur and attend a potluck for the local citizens and anyone that was running for office, at Barlow Grange. It was a campaign trip, but we enjoy the people of Dufur; they are proof of small town hospitality.

We talked with people, left our cards and other election papers on the tables, along with that from several other politicians and shook a lot of hands. We explained what we intended to do and how we intended to operate the Sheriff's Office once elected.

At the same time we were enjoying our meal and fellowship in Dufur over 750 people (at least) were being poisoned as they partook of various salad bars in restaurants throughout The Dalles.

Salmonella bacteria were introduced into the salad bars of these restaurants. Several seriously ill people had to go to the hospital, most of them young or elderly. Visitors passing through also experienced the illness and hospitals up and down the Gorge had the same kind of patients - victims of the poisoning.

While no one, that we are aware of died from the poisoning, many were seriously ill and out of commission for weeks, some even had permanent damage to their health. Public health was called in and did an investigation, even calling the poison control center in Atlanta and using personnel from the National services to attempt to run down the carrier.

There was a strong suspicion in The Dalles that the Rajneesh had somehow tainted the vegetables in the salad bars, but there was no proof. Later, we learned that at least one grocery store had also been attacked by a follower pouring the bacteria over fresh vegetables.

There was no common carrier found. The reason given for the mass illness was servers in the various restaurants were not taking proper sanitary precautions. While it was very strange and quite a "coincidence" that all of the restaurants had the same problem at the same time, no other reason could be attributed to the outbreak, or so the National service decided.

Most of the restaurants, through no fault of their own, lost their business. They had been sued and lost a lot of patrons. Damage wasn't just to those that became ill, but impacted many businesses and their employees as they were accused of improper sanitation and lost their jobs. The financial impact on ALL the victims was high and can never fully be calculated.

In fairness to them they had never encountered anything like this before and there was no proof of a direct attack. Without the ability to issue search warrants on mere suspicion they couldn't force a search of the Rajneesh compounds so even if they had determined it was a deliberate attack it would have been almost impossible to make a case.

Later it was to be found the Rajneesh had indeed committed the mass poisoning attack. This was germ warfare, and it has been declared as the first mass attack of Germ warfare on American citizens.

The Rajneesh felt that if they poisoned people then fewer would go to the polls on Election Day and it would be enough for them to have their candidates win the election. However, not enough people got sick from the salad bars and now, due to their experiment, you couldn't find a salad bar in The Dalles anyway.

To this day many Wasco County residents will never go to a restaurant with a buffet.