Subject: Terri Hoffman Harvey, here's an article that you requested on Terri Hoffman from

From: Rowan Moonstone
Subject: Terri Hoffman

Harvey, here's an article that you requested on Terri Hoffman from the Denver
Post Jan 28, 1990.

TROUBLING DEATHS OF SPIRITUAL SEEKERS: Allegations of mind control fololw
Dallas couple's suicide" by Pete Slover.

BEFORE THEY KILLED THEMSELVES, DAVID AND GLENDA GOODMAN HAD TRANSFERRED
SIGNIFICANT WEALTH TO TERRI HOFFMAN, THEIR SELF-STYLED SPIRITUAL MASTER.

Dallas - He was Jupiter and she was Venus. In their minds, David and Glenda
Goodman were not a former Southern Methodist University professor and his
wife; they were astral travelers, soul matges to the gods.

Long before they shot themselves in their Lake Highlands home in late October,
the Goodmans had seen the "purple realm," their promised land. And, according
to the couple's writings, spiritual guide Terri Hoffman has shown it to them.

They, in turn, had written checks to Hoffman for more than $110,000.

Manuscripts found in the Goodman's home show that their lives were steeped in
Hoffman's teachings of gods and spirits, rays, energy and karma - teachings
she had spread among a modest but tightly knit circle of followers for nearly
two decades.

"You are no longer David Goodman, son of Alice & Leonard. That person is gone
because the programming is wiped out. You are Jupiter now," says one passage
addressed to Goodman in his wife's hand.

Yet, David Goodman's entries reflect a growing doubt, fed by a belief tha the
spirits are singling him out for physical and mental torture. Interspersed
with the answering exhortations in Glenda Goodman's script are oblique
references to drugs and guns as paths to spiritual transcendence.

Neither a suicide note nor a will has been found among the Goodman's
belongings. The writings they left offer no pat answers to the puzzle of
their deaths. The events described in the manuscripts are often as vague as
they are enigmatic.

And yet, these scribbles offer a glimpse into lives that were deeply touched
by Terri Hoffman and her teachings - and that were to end with sudden
violence.

Hoffman's attorney, Fred Time, denounced the notion that Hoffman was connected
with the Goodman's deaths.

When they killed themselves, the Goodmans both 48, joined seven Hoffman
followers, or people who were associates of followers who have committed
suicide or died in accidents since 1977.

Like the others, they had transferred significant wealth to the self-styled
spiritual master, giving her checks for as much as $40,000 at a time. Writings
found in the house indicate that the goodmans were considering transferring
title to a car and a home to Hoffman too.

In a pair of Dallas lawsuits, Hoffman is accused of profiting and "mind
control" in the deaths of the seven who died before the Goodmans. The
lawsuits, filed by Dallas attorney James Paul Barklow on behalf of survivors
allege that Hoffman used hypnosis to make her associates change their wills
and insurance policies to favor her and her metaphysical organization,
Consciousness Development of Body, Mind, and Soul Inc.

Then, the suits allege, Hoffman caused her followers to take their own lives
or suffer fatal accidents.

"This is character assissination," Time said when questioned about the
writings from the Goodmans' house. "You have nothing to go on... What's wrong
with giving a large gift in return for spiritual guidance? Call up some of
the big churches and see if anybody died and left them money."

He refused to discuss specifics of the Goodmans' case or to allow Hoffman to
be interviewed.

In an interview given before the Goodmans; writings came to light, Hoffman
described herself as a victim of a horrific string of coincidental tragedies.

Her relationship with the Goodmans, she said, was a "very close friendship"
that had trailed off to occasional phone conversatins. She said she had not
seen the goodmans in person since several months before their deaths.

Police say the Goodmans had notified most of their relatives about a year ago
that they wanted no further contact.

Because the bodies were badly decomposed when they were found on Nov. 25,
authorities could not determine the exact circumstances of the deaths. But
they have ruled that no third party participated in the shootings. It is
possible, they say, that David and Glaned Goodman ecah committed suicide;
that one shot the other and them committed suicide, or that theysimultaneously
shot each other.

The deaths - and the details that have surfaced since - confound those who
knew only the Goodmans' public personae.

He was a former SMU business and computer professor, a confident, quiet man
with a dry wit and a love for sports. Berkeley and Yale-educated, he left
teaching in 1987 to start an investment counseling service and newsletters.

But in the couple's writings, David Goodman is Jupiter, the Roman war god,
lord of the sky. Some associates assume he adopted this alter ego in the
early 1970s when he told them that Hoffman had pronounced him a reincarnated
warrior.

Glenda Goodman was an articulate woman, the adughter of a reswpected Dallas
physician, a Berkeley graduate, longtime homemaker, mother and devotee of the
arts.

But int eh writings, Glenda Goodman is Venus - the Roman goddess of love,
adopting the role of enforcer in her and her husband's struggle to shed their
earthbound, mortal selves.

The manuscripts abound with references to spirit guides known as Marcus and
Terri. Scrawled on a Christmas shopping list in Glenda Goodman's hand is a
triangle with the word "Christ" at the apex, "Terri" in the lower right corner
and "Marcus" in the lower left . Below Terri on this flow chart is Venus;
below Marcus is Jupiter.

although Marcus appears on ly in the spiritual realm, Terri frequently shows
up on the physical plane as well.

Check registers found at the goodman house show payments to Hoffman totaling
$110,000 between late 1986 and early 1989, the last period for which records
were available. Most of the payments were marked as fees of between $50 and
$100 for frequent counseling sessions. Other payhments were in lump sums,
thousands of dollars, some of which were designated as gifts.

But it was their extraphysical journeys that seemed to preoccupy the Goodmans
as they chronicled their lives.

Among the writings found in the house is an account by Glenda Goodman of a
meditatin that took place about a year before her death:

"Terri 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," she
wrote. "They wanted to show us our home in the purple realm where we go to
rest and renew ourselves after time in the physical."

The realm is describerd as a magnificane crystal city with towering temples
and purifying pools.

This account closely parallels an instructional meditation lecture recoreded
and sold by Hoffman under the title "The Violet Flame Meditation." On that
tape, Hoffman narrates a trip to a valley weith a violet-roomed temple and a
purifying pool.

Hoffman's teachings, as embodied in hundreds of pages of literature and hours
of cassette lectures, do nt conform to any major schools of religious thought.

A biography distributed by Conscious Development says Hoffman was born 51
years ago in Fort Stockton, Texas, then orphaned and sadopted by a Dallas
family.

However, the biography says,"Terri has always felt that the masters were her
real family." The masters , it explains, are invisible beings - Christ and 11
others - who visited her when she was an infant and child and taught her to
harness 'energies'"

Other masters, including Marcus - the spiritual guide in the Goodmans'
writings - and the Malathion, a master with the same name as an agricultural
pesticide.

David Goodman first crossed paths with Terri Hoffman in the early 1970s. He
began attending her meditation classes when he was a newly hired SMU
professor. Goodman apparencly turned to Hoffman for counseling after his
divorce from his first wife, Peggy, in 1972.

"He told me he wouldn't have made it through that period without her," said
one intimate friend of the Goodman's , who asked not to be identified. He
said Goodman spoke often of Terri over the past 17 years, expressing awe at
her powers and teachings.

After their initial meeting, Hoffman performed each of Goodman's three
subsequent marriages, reportedly after approving each prospective wife as a
proper "soul mate". In 1984 she presided at the wedding of David and Glenda,
who had studied under Hoffman since the mid-1970s.

In 1982, David Goodman testified as a character witness for Hoffman in a
jlawsuit over the will of Sandra Cleaver, a follower who left her estate to
Hoffman and Consciousness Development. The case was settled before a jury
could reach a verdict.

Colleagues said Goodman's professional intereste expanded beyond techincal
computer matters to finance - making mon ey - as he studied the application of
computer analysis to stock market trends in the early 1980s.

Hoffman has described herself as a financial adviser, and she apparently
remained in Goodman's life as he ventured into the investment world.

In the early 1980s, co-investors said, Hoffman joined Goodman as an investor
in a California real-estate partnership that later went bust.

When Goodman co-wrote an investment strategy book published in 1986,
"Hyperprofits", he acknowledged Hoffman's "Inspiration ans support."

And Hoffman's lawyer said that she helped Goodman begin the newsletters that
grew out of the book, although that relationship ended a year later.

Glenda Goodman was vice-president of Perfume Oils International, Inc. a now
defunct perfume mixing company founded by Hoffman in ;1985.

Although David Goodman specialized in giving investment advice, some of his
own investments proved problematic.

Internal Revenue Service records show that in 1982 Goodman and his previous
wife claimed more than $100,000 in tax shelters through Hillcrest Securities
Corp., a company whose organizers later were indicted and pleaded guilty to
tax fraud. Goodman and his wife were not implicated inn criminal activity but
their deductions as customers of Hillcrest were disallowed, leaving a $176,000
bill for back taxes.

The appealed the ruling to the U.S. Tax Court. A lawyer working on the case
said a settlement was reached about a year ago. It would have allowed Goodman
and his former wife gradually to reture a tax debt estimated at more than
$300,000 - the original taxes due, plus interest, with no penalties.

Accodrding to the lawyer, no turning points in the case had occurred in the
monthe preceding the Goodman's deaths.

Neither is there any record to incicate that the Goodmans were deeply in debt.
Although a probate attorney still is working to assemble a financial
post-mortem, family members play down money woes as a possible motive for the
couple's suicide.

Yet the writings leave no doubt that in the months before his death, Goodman
was in severe distress - both physically and mentally.

The handwritten pages renge from Glenda Goodman's rapturous desdriptions of
encounters with the masters to the angst-filled catalogues in which David
Goodman hurls questions at her and them.

"God would it be possible for you to make us feel well?" David Goodman pleads
at one point. "god, I don't feel that I ;can continue."

The theme that dominates these pages, which appear to be among the more recent
portions of the manuscripts, is that David-Jupiter must endure a period of
painful testing in order to attain full knowledge of his spiritual self
ultimately.

Police say recently that the deaths of David and Glenda Goodman are still
under investigation. "Even though the evidence indicates that these two
deaths were not caused by an outside agency, the unusual circumstances have
caused us to keep this case open," said Deputy Chief Ray Hawkins.

Glenda Goodman's mother, who asked that her name not be published, said she
had never heard of Hoffman before her daughter's death. But she expressed
concern about Hoffman's influence over her daughter and others.

"I bleieve mind control is real. If anything can be done to stop it, it
should," she said.

Glenda Goodman's children could not be reached for comment, and her sister
declined to be interviewed.

David Goodman's parents, Leonard and Alice Goodman of Santa Maria, Calif.,
reserved judgment on Hoffman, but mourned their son.

"I never wanted to outlive any of my kids," said Leonarn Goodman, 74. "Ill
never be the same; 48 years of my life are gone."

David Goodman's 24-year-old son, Tony, of Dallas, said the financial exchanges
with Hoffman could be explained as "wages" paid by his father to his associate
in an expanding financial consulting business. He offered no comment on
Hoffman, other than to say he had not noticed any ill effects she had on his
father and stepmother.

David Goodman's other son, Rick, 28, of Boston has declined to comment on
Hoffman and his father's death. He and his brother have resumed publication
of their father's financial newsletters.

From: Rowan Moonstone
Subject: Terri Hoffman

GRIM ROSTER OF HOFFMAN FOLLOWERS (Denver Post, 1/28/90)
Dallas - The deaths of David and Glenda goodman last November were the most
recent in a series of suicides and accidental deaths that have stalked the
followers of self-styled spiritual leader Terri Hoffman.

In a 12-year period, several people who were followers of Hoffman or
associated with followers, died in accidents or by suicide. Most of them
knew each other from a weekly meditation class that Hoffman, then Terri
Cooley, taught in the early 1970s at Southern Methodist University. Students
said the nonaccredited course was a blend of metaphysical and Eastern
philosophies.

Several of those who belonged to the group or were assocciated with group
members have since died. They include:

Glenn Cooley, the then-Teri Cooley's second husband, who committed suicide Jan
31, 1977 - four days after their divorce became final. Under the terms of his
handwritten will, she was the sold beneficiary of his estate.



deveraux Cleavcer, the 13-year-old daughter of long-time follower Sandra
Cleaver, was not a member of the group. On Feb. 25, 1979, she drowned off the
island of Hawaii while swimming with her mother and another member of Terri
Hoffman's group. Devereaux left a will leaving everything to Terri Hoffman.

Kenneth Wilder, Hoffman's son, who was killed when he fell from a building
under construction in August 1979. He left his mother his death benefits and
other funds.

Sandra Cleaver died about three years after her daughter. She and family
housekeeper, Louise Watson plunged in a rented car over a cliff in Colorado.
Both Cleaver and Watson - who friends said was not a Hoffman follower -
bequeathed everything to Terri Hoffman in wills made several months before
their deaths. Terri Hoffman also was named beneficiary of insurance policies
totaling $300,000.

Robin Otstott, a former curriculum writer for the Dallas Independent School
District, thought she had a fatal disease when she shot herself in the head
April 22, 1987. Otstott told people that she had contracted viral hepatitis
from a banana peel. Medical tests later showed she did not have the disease.
Otstott had revised her will within months of her death to include Terri
Hoffman.

Richard Donald Hoffman, Hoffman's third husband, who took a fatal overdose of
pills in September 1988, leaving all his property to his wife.