Inside the Murderous Plot of a Stockbroker Turned Killer Cult Leader
In affluent Marin County, California, violent crime was seldom seen. But on Aug. 3, 2000, police responded to a secluded studio apartment tucked behind a family home after reports of gunshots.
Inside, two bodies lay in the bedroom: Jenny Villarin, a 45-year-old bartender at the Paper Mill Creek saloon in Forest Knolls, was on the bed; a man identified as her longtime friend, 54-year-old Jim Gamble, who was visiting from Napa, was on the floor beside it.
Authorities were stumped. Neither victim lived at the apartment, which was rented to Villarin’s 22-year-old daughter, Selina Bishop, whose father was blues rocker Elvin Bishop.
And Selina was nowhere to be found.
“The door was unlocked, and it appeared that somebody knew the property, because it would not be easy for them to find this studio if they didn’t know it existed,” detective Sgt. Fred Marziano says in the latest episode of People Magazine Investigates, which examines the crime and the mystery it spawned.
(The episode, titled “Children of Thunder,” airs Monday at 10 p.m. ET on Investigation Discovery. An exclusive clip is shown above.)
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Quickly, police learned that Villarin was watching the apartment while her daughter was away on a camping trip to Yosemite National Park with her new boyfriend, a man she’d introduced to her mom as “Jordan.”
But as the search for Selina grew more panicked, the true identity of “Jordan” was revealed — which sparked still another mystery.
Police later would unmask him as Glenn Taylor Helzer, a 30-year-old former stockbroker and self-proclaimed prophet whose two followers — his younger brother, Justin, 28, and Justin’s girlfriend, Dawn Godman, 26 — were committed to assist his plan to overtake the Mormon church. He christened their group the Children of Thunder.
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It took a lucky break for investigators to find out how the mysteries converged. And as they investigated, still more bodies piled up.
People Magazine Investigates: Children of Thunder airs Monday (10 p.m. ET) on Investigation Discovery.
