#matthias david

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Daniel Brühl by Matthias David for Face Magazin (2008)

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“State of Shock”

   Matthias David/ Peacock obviously was aware of the activities of his mentor, the cult leader Immanuel David and his cult.  If he were ignorant, he truly would have had to have his head in the sand.   Where was the money coming from?  Where did David / Peacock think the money was going?   At the time of his fraud conviction, Matthias David / Peacock denied any knowledge of the suicides.  “I am not going to comment on it because I cannot say anything that will help at this time, and I am still in a state of shock.  No one would understand anyway.”  (Matthias David letter to H.L. Haun, dated Aug. 5, 1978, page 1.  Please see attachment herein to Order Denying Motion for Reduction in Sentence, filed 8-31-1978.)      That is an odd thing to write: “No one would understand anyway.”  Oh, poor ol’ you.  Try us.  Try explaining why you had lied about being an uncle to Heidi Lindsay, why you had taken money from relatives and onetime friends under false pretenses.    So, David / Peacock was “shocked”?   Yeah, and Captain Renault was “Shocked!  Shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!  Your winnings, sir.  Oh, thank you very much.”    The God I believe in isn’t short of cash, mister.    Apparently, David/ Peacock’s so-called god -- Immanuel David AKA Charles Bruce Longo -- was in need of cash, so as to pay for luxury hotel rooms and other trappings of wealth.  We wonder what aspect of the faith espoused by the Family of David condones or justifies the deceptive obtaining of money from one’s friends and former karate students. 

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Ex-con blames FBI for his own sins

   Matthias David / Peacock seems to acknowledge some culpability in his fraud conviction.  Yet, David/ Peacock oddly places some blame on the FBI for his criminal conviction.   He wrote to his probation officer, in part, as follows: “If I had not gone to prison I would have gone back to New Mexico to open another school in Roswell, and possibly another in Ruidoso.  However, under the circumstances, I would rather not return to that area because of the damage done to my reputation caused by myself and the FBI investigation.”  (Matthias David letter to H.L. Haun, dated Aug. 5, 1978, page 1.  Please see attachment herein to Order Denying Motion for Reduction in Sentence, filed 8-31-1978.)    It is unclear as to what impact the fraud conviction ostensibly had upon the reputation of David / Peacock.  Nor is it clear what relevance the role of the FBI agents had upon the con game that David / Peacock had run upon his onetime friends, acquaintances, and ex-karate students in New Mexico.  Regardless, the FBI merely was doing its job and David / Peacock clearly brought the arrest on himself.  Yet, why does the ex-con blame the FBI for harm to his reputation?  The federal investigators merely followed the evidence that led to David/ Peacock’s conviction.    (Note:  In the 1990s, after opening another karate and kickboxing gym, this time in Spokane, WA, Matthias David / Peacock would relish in bragging about how he had fractured an FBI agent’s ribs during sparring.  One wonders how an ostensibly ”nonviolent” or professional martial arts instructor would take delight in boasting how he had injured a law enforcement officer – even if this had occurred during sparring.)

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Money was stolen, not loaned (part 1)

   In January 1978, Heidi Lindsay, age 9, sustained injuries and was paralyzed from the waist down in a traffic collision that killed both her parents.  The girl was treated at a hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah.  The tragic case got news media coverage.  Heidi’s uncle and aunt did not and never were acquainted with Matthias David, according to an FBI investigation and statements in the federal Complaint for Wire Fraud against Matthias David.   Again, the Lindsay Family did NOT know any Matt David or Matthias David and did NOT receive any money that Matthias David reputedly collected on the injured girl’s behalf.  Nor had the family authorized Matthias David to collect any donations while invoking the name of the injured girl Heidi Lindsay.  Clearly, David/ Peacock lied.  (See federal Information for Wire Fraud against Matthias David.)   The scam began in April 1978, when Matthias David contacted his onetime students who had patronized his then-karate dojo in Alamogordo, N.M., falsely claimed that he was related to the injured girl Heidi Lindsay, and solicited contributions with the

pretext of giving those contributions to the benefit of the injured girl.  According to results of an FBI investigation mentioned in court documents (filed with the U.S. District Court, District of Utah – Central Division, case No. CR-78-00063), Matthias David concocted the scheme, and he did not give ANY of the solicited contributions to the hospital or the injured girl.  Matthias David blatantly lied to get the money, $11,268.65, which the federal court ordered him to repay to his victims as restitution.    Matthias David and another cult member were accused of making up phony hard-luck stories.  According to sources quoted in Washington Post and Chicago Tribune news reports, Matthias David apparently gave the “donated” money to his mentor Bruce Longo AKA Charles Bruce Longo AKA Immanuel David, a religious zealot.  See news article “Father Was the ‘Target” of Fraud Investigation,” Salt Lake Tribune, Aug. 4, 1978.)    Ultimately, the ruse that con man Matthias David had created was not very sophisticated, just like the man himself.  Apparently, the con man assumed that, since both parents had been killed in the fatal automobile collision, the girl Heidi Lindsay was rendered an orphan.  But the con man did not count on the fact that Heidi had an aunt and uncle -- who later told the FBI they didn’t know Matthias David and had not tasked him with collecting any money on Heidi’s behalf.  Oops, big mistake, con man.   Matthias David’s actual sisters -- not his cult “sisters” -- reportedly turned him in to authorities and shunned him.  On 10-03-1978, Matthias David pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges.  A guilty plea basically is an admission of guilt.  A defendant tells the court, “Yes, I committed that crime.”  He was convicted on charges of wire fraud in U.S. District Court, Central Division of Utah, United States of America v. Matthias David, #CR 78-00063.    Note that, in his self-serving requests for a shortened sentence (which were denied), David/ Peacock begged for early release, so that he could live with his brother and sisters in the Spokane area.  He failed in his immediate motion to reduce the five year sentence.  (Order Overruling Motion for Reduction of Sentence, filed 8-31-1978.)  Instead, the court ordered defendant to get a psychiatric workup.

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From the archive: Utah mystery: How did zealot get money? (August 5, 1978)

   A Chicago Tribune report speculates as to how the religious cult leader Immanuel David and his Family of David obtained money.  Clearly, the money was used to pay for luxury hotel rooms, expensive pianos, and big-ticket items -- not material goods that one would associate with a so-called prophet or the reputed incarnation of a deity.

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MazeMinistry.com reprints a page 1 article, dated 4-09-2000, from the Spokesman-Review newspaper in Spokane, WA.

   “Cult remnant still believes after 22 years:

    “Murder-suicides In Salt Lake didn’t finish Family of David”

By Bill Morlin, Staff writer

  One August morning in 1978, Rachel David marched her seven children to an 11th floor balcony of a Salt Lake City hotel. One by one, she threw or coaxed them over the railing. Then, she jumped.       Three days earlier, her husband, Immanuel David, who believed he was God, killed himself because the FBI was investigating his cult.       Most people thought the shocking saga of lmmanuel David and his cult – the biggest murder-suicide case in Utah’s history –ended 22 years ago.       It didn’t.  (To continue reading, click link above.)

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Ex-cult members worry about hold over remaining members

  “Ex-cult members move on:  Ex-members of the group worry about its enduring hold over remaining members,” by Bill Morlin.    Article originally published April 10, 2000, starting on Page A8, in The Spokesman-Review, a daily newspaper in Spokane, WA, USA.

  (This is the second of two stories on the Family of David.  Part one, in Sunday’s newspaper, traced the cult's turbulent history from Bruce Longo’s initial visions to the present.)   Paul Chipman says he now knows God, and the Creator isn’t a 300-pound religious zealot who committed suicide 22 years ago.  But for eight years Chipman followed that zealot, Bruce Longo, who renamed himself Immanuel David and convinced a handful of followers he was God.   Immanuel David's wandering cult led to the most notorious murder-suicide case in Utah history, with eight deaths.   Ex-members are now worried because the cult they belonged to didn’t die with Immanuel David in August 1978.   His wife and their seven children jumped or were tossed from a Salt Lake City hotel balcony three days after Immanuel David

committed suicide.   A teenaged girl survived and now lives with remnants of the Family of David near Denver.  Other ex-members live in Spokane.   They still believe Immanuel David is God and eagerly await his return.   That troubles Chipman and another former member, Gil Hibben, of LaGrange, Ky., both of whom rejected recent invitations to rejoin the group.   Others familiar with the cult -- a Spokane nurse raised in the Family of David and a Florida police chief who is Immanuel David’s brother -- are also worried.   “It’s hard to believe that his influence is still hanging over them,”  Chipman said recently at his home in Midvale, Utah.   Pictures of Jesus and a cross hang on his living room wall, and the 58-year-old concrete worker says he’s now a reborn Christian.  He prays weekly with his grown daughters, who were born in the cult but left it.   Chipman was ex-communicated from the Mormon Church after he started following Immanuel David in 1969.   Over the years, Immanuel David frequently ordered Chipman to leave his wife and seven daughters.  He left his newborn daughter in Spokane in the mid-1970s and spent a year in Washington, D.C.  Immanuel David sent Chipman and two other “archangels” there to wait for the government to fall, so he could assume command.   Chipman and his wife gave their paychecks to Immanuel David, who lived an extravagant lifestyle in hotel suites.   The ex-member is at a loss to explain why he or the others followed Immanuel David.   “I can tell you this much: I had spiritual experiences in that group,” Chipman said.   “Spiritual, I guess, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily from God.  But they were experiences to keep you hooked, to keep you thinking that, ‘If I had this experience, then this must be right.’ ”’   Chipman left the group about a year before the murder-suicides.   “I was shocked,” he said, but he recalled earlier discussions about mass suicide.  “I watched some of them being born, and I’d tended those kids in the group.”   Immanuel David’s grip on his life lasted for many years, Chipman said.   “I looked back now at that time, and it was totally wasted years, just totally wasted,” said Chipman, who has remarried.   Chipman and Hibben, who was Peter David when he was in the group, both recently were invited to rejoin the Family of David by Matthias David, of Spokane, and Jacob David, of Aurora, Colo.   Jacob David, interviewed at his Colorado home, said ex-members Chipman and Hibben are “like Judas Iscariot,” who betrayed Jesus.   “They’re not on our side,” Jacob David said.  “They don’t know the true God anymore.”   Jacob and Matthias David say their group is a family, not a cult, and is not dangerous.   In a “testimonial letter” in 1996, they restated their commitment to Immanuel David. They wear the Star of David and believe they are reincarnated Bible figures.  And they believe that white people are the true Israelites.   Hibben said he’s frightened that the group still exists.   “They’re not my friends anymore, and I don’t want anything to do with that group,” Hibben said.  “These people were crazy.”   “The tragic thing was those kids dying,” Hibben said.   He and Chipman met while studying karate with Sterling Peacock, who became Matthias David, near Salt Lake City in the late 1960s.   Soon, the three met Bruce Longo through Mormon Church study groups and watched him evolve into Immanuel David, religious zealot.  He convinced his followers to be baptized by him and change their names to David.   The leader committed suicide as federal agents were investigating him for tax evasion and fraud.   Hibben, who left the group after the deaths, went on to become a world-class custom-knife maker.  He made the knife Sylvester Stallone used in the movie “Rambo.”  He now regrets ever being involved with Immanuel David.   Two years ago, (Matthias) made contact with me and tried to get me to come back into the group,” Hibben said.   “He told me if the old gang was back together, that would bring back Immanuel David.   “I said, ‘I don’t want to talk to those people ever again, as long as I live,’ ” Hibben said.   Both Hibben and Chipman said they believe the potential exists for more tragic deaths.   “If they thought they had a revelation that Immanuel told them to do that, I suppose that could happen,” Chipman said.   A Spokane woman who grew up in the cult also remains fearful.   “I’m scared to death of them,” she said in an interview.  She said she wants nothing to do with the group, which includes her mother and father, but remains in contact with her maternal grandparents, Keith and Afton Miller, of Pleasant Grove, Utah.   The Millers -- lifelong Mormons -- are upset that their daughter remains a member of the anti-Mormon cult.   The 31-year-old Spokane woman, a registered nurse, said, “It is not possible to describe in words what growing up in this atmosphere was like.”   She made the statement in a court affidavit filed in a child-custody case.  She agreed to be interviewed if she wasn’t publicly identified.   As a child living in the commune, she was periodically beaten, she said.   Once, when she and the other children were laughing, Immanuel David took his socks off and stuck his foot in her mouth.   Other times, adults would simultaneously pull in opposite directions on the arms of an older child until the child “would scream in agony,” she said.   Matthias David was second in charge and faithfully followed Immanuel David, her court affidavit says.   Matthias David, now a Spokane karate instructor, insists the group is nothing more than extended family.  He believes he’s Moses reincarnated and that Immanuel David is God.   The brother of the late Immanuel David, now a police chief in Florida, also said he’s disturbed that the group remains together.    “I don’t recall seeing anything God-like about my brother, who was a mortal in every sense of the word,” Dean Longo said when contacted in Auburndale, Fla.   After leaving the family’s Yonkers, N.Y., home for Brigham Young University, his brother became estranged from him and their mother, who is a widow, Dean Longo said.    “I wasn’t aware of what was going on out in Utah, other than my brother was involved in something that was questionable, at best.    “There must have been a charismatic side to him that the rest of us didn’t know about,” Dean Longo said.   He likened his late brother to other murder-suicide cult leaders.   “History has shown us this kind of stuff goes on,” he said.  “As I see it, it’s not leadership, it’s domination.   “It’s strange in this case that those who he supposedly cared about the most -- his family -- are the ones who suffered the most.”   Dean Longo and his mother flew to Salt Lake City for the funerals of Immanuel David and his family in 1978.   The family is buried in adjoining paupers’ graves, without headstones, in a small cemetery in Taylorsville.   Since then, Dean Longo hasn’t visited his brother’s grave.   “I do believe there is a God,” he said, “but I don’t believe it’s my former brother.”

   (End of story.)

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Matthias David arrested

  Before opening a karate studio in Spokane, Washington, Matthias David AKA Matt David AKA Sterling James Peacock was arrested in 1978 on federal wire fraud charges.  The man had changed his name from Peacock to David for religious reasons, which we shall examine at length later.    What was significant are the motivations and manifestations of David’s unusual behavior.  You can read for yourself: David masqueraded as the uncle of a critically injured girl, contacted his acquaintances, friends, and former karate students, knowingly told them a falsified story about reputedly collecting money for the girl’s care, and gave the money -- not to the child’s welfare fund -- but to a demented religious cult leader who later committed suicide.  (More on that death in the next post.)    David admitted his culpability by pleading guilty.  He had swindled his onetime friends and students out of $11,268.65.  He was sentenced to five years in federal prison, which he’d served at Terminal Island correctional facility in San Pedro, CA.    David served a total of five years’ probation, most of which he served upon his release. David then made his way back to Spokane, WA.