Re: Hare Krishna sects not related to Chris Butler/SOI

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elievers just need to look back into the lives of Bhaktivedanta’s first disciples – Kirtananda, Hansadutta, Jayatirtha, Bhavananda, Guru Kripa, Balimardan … the criminal list goes on and on. People died under these successors, children and women were sexually and physically abused, yet they are not enough for followers nowadays to question their faith.

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g racing is dangerous, but there are worse things out there—things besides a bad crash that can get you killed. Funny Car pioneer Steve Bovan couldn’t have known what dangers lay outside of drag racing, but the sensational end to his life might have been avoided had he stuck with the danger he knew, instead of the danger he couldn’t have imagined.

Bovan was a barnstorming drag racer in the 1960s and early 1970s, something most racers dreamed of doing. Who wouldn’t love to have been a touring drag racer from that golden era?

Bovan raced his Junior Stock Corvette in the early 1960s with Dick Castro, winning NHRA C/Stock in 1964. He also raced a 1956 Chevy in Modified Production, and later in 1964 he was running a Max Wedge Mopar. But he wanted something faster

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Then in 1971 Bovan sold the Camaro. He moved to less expensive Costa Mesa, California, just up the coast a few miles from Laguna Beach and started working first for a VW repair shop and then for Delthic Auto Designs, a car-customizing shop in Costa Mesa. His transition from drag racer to drug dealer must have happened around this time, because he was on probation from an Arizona conviction for selling 1,200 pounds of marijuana. “Once we heard about Bovan’s drug stuff, I could see the connection to money,” Poland says.

At this point, our story takes a detour through a dark journey stemming from drug manufacturing and distribution taking place in Orange County, California, in the 1960s and 1970s, culled from Orange County Grand Jury and Orange County Superior Court testimony, as well as Newport Beach Police Department (NBPD) and Orange County District Attorney interviews of the time. Though some or all of this seems like something out of a movie, rest assured it’s all been testified to under oath.

Delthic was one of many small companies owned by Prasadam Distributors Inc. (PDI), an amalgam of businesses purchased with cash by Joseph Shelton Davis III or “Dritavarata,” as fellow Hare Krishnas religious followers called him. His companies were donating more than $2 million to a Hare Krishna temple in Laguna Beach, according to the NBPD. (Newport Beach Police Department)

The temple, known as International Society of Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON, was an unorthodox devotional Krishna organization loosely based on the teachings of Bhagavad-gita and Srimad-Bhagavatam. The bulk of its assets came from Hindu-related products and fruit juices it sold; from a Laguna Beach restaurant called Govinda’s, a Krishna health-food restaurant; and other less conventional methods.

To the uninitiated, the image of Hare Krishna came from their ubiquitous presence in airports, where young pilgrims cloaked in robes wearing ponytails offered books, incense, and paper flowers to travelers for a donation.

This temple had an illicit drug history going back to the 1960s when Timothy Leary, the long-time proponent of the hallucinogen LSD, and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a gang of hippie surfers affiliated to and led by Leary who espoused a communal, free-love lifestyle based in Laguna Beach, were cooking the stuff in the Laguna Beach canyons just down the road from ISKCON. LSD was sold through the temple, it was said, because Leary liked their association with Eastern spirituality [Greg Lynd testimony to Orange County Grand Jury, 1973]. Leary would ultimately be arrested in Laguna Beach in 1968 and sentenced in March 1970 to prison for possession of marijuana, LSD, and hashish.

By the mid-1970s, ISKON’s financial portfolio ran the gamut of enterprises, with at least one revenue stream from the distribution and sale of hash oil. They used pilgrims as drug mules, smuggling “honey oil” hidden in typewriter cases from Pakistan through international airports, based on trial testimony. A $1,000 liter bottle could be sold for $11,000 in the United States—a tenfold profit. Once through customs, pilgrims would fly from Pakistan into Canada, mail their luggage and typewriter cases home, then travel back to Laguna Beach.

Though a completely different region today, back in the 1960s and early 1970s, the Middle East was a very open society, easy for carefree travelers to trek along what was called the “hippie trail,” a route running from England through Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. There were nomads on camels, scenic vistas, and travel was made easy with restaurants, cheap lodging, and Western food available all along the way.

The huge sums of cash from drug sales posed the typical problem of laundering it. Prasadam Distributors Inc. funneled ISKCON’s cash through its maze of companies in the classic money-laundering pattern. As PDI became more entrenched in the management and distribution of drugs, it even took on freelance “associates,” who gave a percentage of their profits in exchange for the front PDI afforded.

While PDI was taking in millions of dollars, its loose accounting allowed associates and small-time dealers to skim, including Bovan. He must have known the money’s source and the persistent rumor that PDI investor Alexander Kulik, a frequent visitor to PDI companies, kept more than $1 million in cash buried somewhere. Kulik was a Krishna follower and generous ISKCON donor. His “service” to them was curiously confidential, but enormously important and greatly appreciated.

Eventually, the organization realized Bovan was embezzling. Rather than confronting him directly, they chose to have someone outside take care of it. They contacted Frank Rossi, the brother-in-law of the wife of an ISKCON associate. With help from friends Anthony “Big Tony” Merone and Raymond Resco, Rossi was hired to facilitate Bovan’s quick return of the stolen money, according to Robert Emory’s testimony in court.

The United States Marshals Services newly formed Witness Protection Program had just relocated ex-mobsters Merone and Resco to Orange County after they gave testimony in New York against the mob. In exchange they got a new, clean life in California. Their lives and that of Bovan’s would soon intersect with tragic results.

Rather than resolving Bovan’s embezzling, they muscled in on the fast cash, bringing in Merone’s son, “Little Tony,” to help “manage” PDI’s businesses, squeezing Bovan out. Bovan was surely mad about his ouster, based on what he did next. Bovan assembled former Delthic employees Stan Kieffer and Robert Shea to help hatch a plan. Kieffer and Shea should have known better, having recently been roughed up by Rossi and ISKCON thugs over skimming suspicions themselves, from Newport Police interviews with a confidential informant identified only as “CI.”

Their plan was put on hold when the Huntington Beach Police Department arrested Bovan for drug possession with intent to sell. It wasn’t until August 1977 when Bovan was released and their plan could be hatched.

Bovan rigged Kulik’s car to run out of gas one night, where he waited with a .45-caliber automatic pistol to kidnap Kulik at gunpoint. Bovan shoved him into the back of a pickup, and with Kieffer driving, Bovan and a bound Kulik rode together in the small camper. Bovan tried to coax the location of Kulik’s cool cash with the butt of his loaded pistol. He denied he had a cash stash, but offered up $100,000 in a safe at PDI.

The next day, following instructions the kidnappers gave by phone, three cars were dispatched to the lookout on Interstate 5 just outside of San Clemente, California. Accompanying Big Tony was PDI’s Joe Fedorowski, known as “Gupta,” and Rossi in one car, Little Tony and Resco in the second car, and Joe Davis and another East Coast associate of the Merones named Jerry Fiori. En route, Little Tony and Resco helped themselves to an estimated $70,000 of the $100,000, assuming the kidnappers would not notice until after releasing Kulik.

When the rescuers pulled into the lookout parking lot and saw the pickup, out popped Bovan swinging his .45, crazy with rage, yelling and screaming at Rossi. One car in the trio blocked the exit while Bovan was calmed down and the cash could be laid on the truck’s seat. Then the kidnappers tried to leave without giving up Kulik. Rossi got out of his car and screamed at the truck to release Kulik or no one was leaving. As the kidnappers sped away, Kulik was kicked out the back, blindfolded with his hands taped behind his back. A car with Big Tony, Fiori, and Davis followed them down the interstate toward San Diego, where a cops-and-robbers-type running gun battle exploded.

Somehow the kidnappers successfully outran the gun-waving mobsters. No one was injured in the back-and-forth exchange of gunfire, according to trial testimony by Kieffer. Now Kulik and the ISKCON heads plotted their next move. Hoping to get revenge and eliminate three embezzlers in a single act, they offered Big Tony and Resco a $125,000 contract for the murder of Bovan, Kieffer, and Shea.

The plan was to capture the kidnappers and then kill them by injecting them with pure heroin, making it look like an overdose. Big Tony and his associates staked out Bovan’s home for weeks and just missed Kieffer and Shea, who were spotted by lookouts in a free food line at a Krishna temple in San Diego. Yet the kidnappers managed to elude their capture for more than a month.

Big Tony spread the word he would pay $1,200 to anyone who saw Bovan, according to testimony from Frank Rossi’s brother-in-law, Rick Willis. Finally, in the early misty morning hours of October 22, 1977, Bovan was seen at the bar of a Mexican restaurant in Newport Beach. Big Tony, Resco, and Fiori sped to the restaurant to complete their job...

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