Holy Terror

Eight die in a Memphis battle

When two Memphis policemen answered a routine call about a shoplifting suspect at a house in a working-class black neighborhood last week, they had no idea that seven members of a fanatical religious cult were waiting for them inside. Led by Lindberg Sanders, 49, a self-styled "black Jesus," the Bible-reading cultists considered police to be agents of the devil. Some 30 hours after the police visit, eight people lay dead, including a patrolman who had been held hostage and then beaten to death.

The trouble began Tuesday afternoon when officers visited the house at 2239 Shannon in response to a phone tip about a shoplifter. They failed to find the suspect. But later, they were called back to the brick and frame dwelling to answer a complaint from one of the cult members about the police's handling of the investigation. As two officers entered the house, the occupants jumped them, and shots were exchanged. One officer put out a call for help, which was answered by two more policemen. When all four officers were inside the house, a short gun battle took place. Three policemen escaped, but Patrolman Robert Hester, 34, a ten-year veteran of the force, was captured and held hostage.

At first, police reinforcements thought they could talk Hester's captors out. The officers barricaded the area, surrounded the cult headquarters and evacuated nearby buildings. Police established contact with Sanders over Hester's police radio. Nearly incoherent, Sanders repeatedly threatened to "blow [Hester's] head off." By midnight the batteries in the police radio had run down, and contact was maintained through a bullhorn and occasionally the telephone.

As the siege dragged on through the night, police reported that Sanders, an unemployed construction worker and father of four, believed that the world was scheduled to end early last week, and he had become deranged when it did not. It was also disclosed that Sanders had been treated for "a major psychotic disorder" at a psychiatric hospital and had stopped receiving treatment last month. He and his fellow religionists, one of whom was Sanders' 26-year-old son, refused to eat pork or drink water. Sanders had decorated the back of the house on Shannon with pink half moons and big yellow stars. On a tree in the yard hung a sign: WANTED FOR MURDER. MR. HOG. KNOWN ALIASES: PORK, SWINE, HOG, PIG.

By Wednesday morning, Sanders had permitted Officer Hester to shout from a window that he was all right. Police, meanwhile, began monitoring sounds in the house with boom microphones. Later that night they also moved a TACT force (a local SWAT team) into the area. Early Thursday morning, police at the listening devices heard Sanders say, "My daddy's dead, my brother's dead, and the devil's dead." Assuming that the "devil" meant Hester, police stormed the house with tear gas and gunfire. Within minutes the firefight was over. Hester's battered body was found just inside the door, with his arms handcuffed behind his back. Outside the house, several officers wept. One complained that police had waited too long to attack, saying, "They let him die. That's the bottom line." Said Police Spokesman Bob Graham: "I don't believe anybody who dealt with this could say that we didn't do everything possible to end it peacefully." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.