Elected through Terror

Untitled Part 46

The next morning I arrived at the office and advised my detective sergeant as to what had happened the evening before.

This would be a monumental investigation, it was a lot to take in – but we were ready to formulate a plan.

As I was doing this, I received a phone call from the DA asking me to come to his office. We sat down with the FBI agent assigned to our area and talked over what had happened the night before.

It then occurred to us that we had not taken notes. However, the agent reached over to get the Oregonian Newspaper, published that morning, and read off the charges – THEY had taken pretty good notes.

However, it still left us with a void as to how we were going to begin.

It was decided we needed to have the Chief of the force come up to The Dalles and see what she knew about the crimes.

I called down to talk to her and ask her to come up. Initially I was met with resistance. The dispatcher said she was in the daily meeting with Rajneesh and would not be available for a couple of hours.

I asked her to have someone get her; the dispatcher said she wasn't available. I then asked her if she was refusing to contact the Chief and if she was ready to suffer the consequences for not doing so – a few minutes later the Chief called me.

She would come up immediately. I asked her to meet us in the DA's office. When she arrived a few hours later, she brought with her the 'city attorney' for Rajneeshpuram.

We then began to ask questions. Basically she had been kept out of the loop of any of the allegations. While I can't recall what the City Attorney said, I remember that she wanted to be involved in the investigation – at least informed as to what was going on.

This was going to have to be a massive investigation. Wasco County did not have the resources to conduct it. Obviously we could not allow the Rajneesh "Peace Force" to conduct it; we didn't know who was involved, there was also a question as to the legality of the city and therefore the status of the Agency.

Later that afternoon, the Governor told us that he was invoking the statutes that allowed him to do investigations in lieu of local law enforcement. Neither the DA nor I was happy with his mandate.

As Sheriff I was the chief law enforcement officer of the county and to be told I could not instigate the investigations was like a slap in the face. I knew the DA felt the same about the usurping of his prosecution's role.

While I was not happy about relinquishing the primary investigative role to the Oregon State Police and the Attorney General's Office we really had no choice and didn't try to argue.

My Office's resources were limited. I had just a few deputies and the rest of the county had to be served. We still had activities going on, just like any other law enforcement office; we had accidents, crimes, calls to answer, papers to serve and the rest of the citizenry to protect.

The county did not have the financial resources to fund the investigation; it would require a great deal of overtime and bringing in other Sheriff's Deputies to augment my staff.

I had some very good people, not enough, though, and we didn't have the experience that would be required to undergo this investigation, it was obviously going to be a massive undertaking.

This was to be an immense amount of work, requiring hours of on scene investigation by a large contingency of investigators.

While I didn't particularly care about how this would be viewed nationally, I knew that having the State involved would help keep the finger pointers at bay; it wouldn't be just the "local, red-necked biased County Sheriff" doing the investigation; thus taking away the seriousness of the crimes.

At the time the investigation, considering the task force, agencies and all the investigators involved, was the largest joint effort in Oregon's history. Dozens of people were involved, every day, in the investigation for several weeks and then for months afterwards.

We also brought in outside county and city agencies to augment our investigators on the ranch and perform some of the peripheral duties.

I do have to admit that the State Police and Attorney General's investigators did a good job; and they included the deputies I assigned to the investigation at every step of the way. I was also kept abreast on a daily basis.

Back in 1985 we didn't hear about task forces. We had joint investigations, but that was different. Today, departments pair up on a regular basis to form Tasks Forces for complicated or major crime investigations.

The Rajneesh Crime Task Force consisted of:

The FBI, which took on the wiretapping investigations.

The INS, continued their investigations on Immigration fraud.

The other crimes were left to The State Police, Attorney General Investigators and we came along for the ride doing whatever we could to assist.

The lead agency was the Oregon State Police; with a Lieutenant as the lead investigator.

I will not be going into a lot of detail about the investigation and related charges, at this time. Only what I was actually a part of when I was on the scene and/or comments by our deputies who were assigned to the investigation.

This writing is not so much a point by point narrative to the investigation, as it is the experience I had as a relatively new Elected Sheriff.

A Sheriff who would have been over his head as the investigation was conducted – work that would have been in addition to many other issues our Office was facing at the time.

My ego aside, the Governor made a wise decision.