Cult Murder/Suicide~ Tragic/Heart-renting Story From Oregon

Relatives struggle to grasp killings 03/17/02 MICHELLE COLE, MAXINE BERNSTEIN, DANA TIMS and EMILY TSAO Faith ruled the lives of Robert and Janet Bryant. A crisis of faith drove them from California to Oregon. Faith in themselves then created a life in Yamhill County most people only dream about. Four outgoing and energetic children cared for by a stay-at-home mom. Plans to build a house on a slice of land they owned free and clear. A thriving new business. Bills that were paid -- even ahead of schedule. Yet sometime after 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 23, Robert Bryant, who was by all accounts a loving husband and father, picked up a 12-gauge shotgun and almost ceremoniously killed his wife, two sons and two daughters. Then he shot and killed himself. Yamhill County sheriff's deputies discovered the bodies in the family's home Thursday. Police, neighbors and grieving relatives on Saturday were still sorting out the circumstances that led to one of Oregon's worst mass murders. The man who sold the Bryants their manufactured home said he'd spoken to Robert Bryant on Feb. 21 about a repair. Bryant was his usual good-natured self, he said. No clear motive has emerged for the murder-suicide, except that it was perhaps, as Janet Bryant's sister suggests, a desperate attempt by Robert Bryant to keep his children away from his parents and other California relatives.

The family had become estranged three years ago after a wrenching break with their Jehovah's Witnesses congregation. Robert and Janet Bryant were both 37 when they died. Their oldest son, Clayton, was 15; Ethan, 12; Ashley, 9; and the youngest, Alyssa, was 8. Their move to the McMinnville area last summer was supposed to have been a starting over, of sorts. Robert Bryant grew up in Shingle Springs, a rural community about 40 miles east of Sacramento, where homes are nestled between horse ranches and dry foothills. His parents, Keith and Arlene Bryant, had raised their three sons and daughter in the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses in El Dorado County. Robert met Janet at a private high school affiliated with the church. Married just out of their teens, the couple held weekly Bible classes and prayer meetings in their home, a teal-colored ranch-style house they rented before purchasing in 1997. Their well-kept property fronted to a gravel road, named Pleasant View Lane, and included 1.3 acres overlooking Sacramento Valley. On crystal-clear days, the family could see Mount Diablo from their front windows.

Neighbors recalled watching the Bryant children biking up and down the gravel road and Janet Bryant often walking the children to the corner to catch a school bus. The Bryants home-schooled their children for a while but eventually decided to send all but the oldest boy to public school in California.

Working with his father and brothers, Robert Bryant had a landscaping business and was often seen driving his white pickup truck and hauling lawn-mowing equipment in a green trailer. He worked weekdays and weekends, no matter the weather, a neighbor said. "He seemed very loving and very kind and was always patting his children on the head," said Dana Jones, who lived next door. The Bryant family enjoyed hunting, fishing and camping trips. They regularly attended prayer meetings with Robert Bryant's parents, his two brothers and sister, said Mark Messier, an elder of the congregation. Robert Bryant was "cordial, very unassuming, mild and meek," Messier said. Jehovah's Witnesses, according to their official Web site, believe that the Bible is the inspired, infallible word of God, whose true name is Jehovah. They believe that Jesus is the son of God but not equal to God or part of a trinity. Members are organized in congregations that worship in Kingdom Halls, and they believe that they are living in the last days before God establishes a kingdom on Earth.

Three years ago Robert Bryant, who had become a church elder, grew disillusioned with what he considered to be hypocrisy among the members. He decided to leave the faith, for which one of the basic tenets is not to question. That decision prompted other church elders to hold a hearing leading to Bryant's "disfellowship" from the church and his isolation from his family and friends. The practice, called shunning by non-Witnesses, is based on a biblical passage that urges believers not to associate with "any one who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reveler, drunkard, or robber -- not even to eat with such a one."

"He was expelled for conduct not in harmony with the Bible's principles," Messier said. "If they've chosen to be a certain way, you withhold association from them, hoping they realize the error of their ways." Ouster distresses wife Janet Bryant was troubled by her husband's expulsion. She was upset when members of the congregation refused to say hello at the supermarket. She suffered fatigue and felt physically drained, said Sharon Roe, her younger sister. "She was very torn," Roe said. "But she was the kind of person to hold her feelings in and be strong for her children." Though Robert and Janet Bryant were to be avoided, the children's grandparents and aunts and uncles tried to maintain contact with the youngsters. Much to Robert Bryant's distress, Messier said, relatives had even sought legal advice on whether the grandparents could require visitation. With most of his landscaping customers being fellow Jehovah's Witnesses, Robert Bryant lost jobs once he was ousted by the church. He filed for bankruptcy in January 2000. Court papers detail debts totaling $234,008 against assets of $203,776, mostly credit card debt.

The Bryants' list of assets included a '92 Chevy pickup, a '97 Chevy van, a 20-foot travel trailer, two cats, 11 chickens, one sheep, six rabbits and a puppy. The list also included two 12-gauge shotguns and two rifles. In March 2001, Bryant's father disassociated himself from the landscaping business, further hampering Bryant's ability to earn a living in California. "The way he described it, they were absolutely horrible what they were doing to him," said Albert Clary, who lived across the street from Robert and Janet Bryant in Shingle Springs. By June, the couple had sold their house, loaded their belongings in the dead of night and moved their family to Oregon, where Janet Bryant had lived for a time as a girl and where the family had vacationed. They didn't tell their Jehovah's Witnesses relatives where they'd gone, Roe said.
Mark Marshall, a McMinnville State Farm insurance agent, said Robert Bryant had told him last summer that he left California because of a church dispute and that his parents were trying to gain custody of the children to keep them in the congregation. Marshall said Bryant told him: "We're coming up here to get away from them."

Business improves The Bryants initially stayed at the Portland-Dayton RV Park in Dayton and then at the Olde Stone Village RV Park in McMinnville. By October, the landscaping business Bryant had started in McMinnville -- often by going door to door in search of new clients -- began to pick up. He'd landed a few big accounts and provided Vern Skoog, general manager of Homes America, with records showing monthly earnings of $7,500. The growing business enabled Bryant to close the deal on a $42,000, 1,300-square-foot double-wide manufactured home. The home was to be moved onto a 2.2-acre parcel that the couple purchased for $96,000. The property commanded a sweeping view of the countryside and featured the sounds of birds chirping and cows mooing and the common sight of deer grazing on a front lawn. By December, the Bryants had paid off what they owed on the property.

Marshall described Bryant as someone who was "exceedingly responsible for his age." He took out insurance on two cars and the house and never missed a payment, in fact sometimes paying early, Marshall said. "There's no way we think he was in dire financial straits." The financial demands on Bryant were even more than a normal home buyer would face, due to the bankruptcy he'd declared 15 months earlier in California. But every time Skoog requested another record or canceled check, Bryant would pop back the next day with whatever was needed to keep the process going. Bryant had confided that he planned to start building a wood-frame house adjacent to the modular home this spring. "Everything seemed to be going great for them," Skoog said. Why then, eight months into their new life, would Robert Bryant shoot his wife and then his children still tucked in their beds? If he was too desperate to live, why not commit suicide but spare the family? Nobody can answer such questions with certainty.

Killings rarely include children Murder-suicides occur more often than many people think. At least 159 Oregonians were involved in 75 murder-suicides from 1991 to 2000, according to data maintained by the Oregon State Police. Of the 75 cases, 56 involved a man killing his current or estranged intimate partner. In only seven cases, however, did a man take the lives of his children before killing himself. A man who feels hopeless and isolated, as Robert Bryant might have if family and church ties were severed, is at risk for suicide, said Dr. James Hancey, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health and Science University. If he has experienced big changes in his life, including a new job and residence, the stress in his life is magnified, even if he sought the changes, he said. But Hancey said why a man might kill his family before committing suicide is harder to discern. While he was not familiar with the details of Bryant tragedy, Hancey said, sometimes such actions are related to distorted religious thoughts but may arise from other factors. Messier said Bryant's family is grieving and "shocked" by the loss. "We're devastated by what's happened," brother Lance Bryant said in a prepared statement. "They were all really dear to us and they'll be sorely missed. We're trying to deal with everything here, in terms of helping the family out." Roe said she learned of the deaths about 2 a.m. Friday when she was visited by local law enforcement officers and a chaplain. Seated in her living room, she listened to a deputy tell her there had been a murder-suicide in Oregon involving Robert Bryant.
"I heard Robert. I heard Janet. I heard Clayton. I kept thinking, 'It's got to stop. There's got to be someone left.' Then I realized all six of them were gone," she said Saturday. "I rationalize in my mind that whatever he did, he must have done it out of love and out of protection for his family," Roe said. "In his own mind, he felt he was protecting them, and that's all I could reason out of it."

Critics have said the practice of disfellowship severs family ties, shatters individuals and may lead to suicide or attempted suicides. But Charles Hobart, who has been a Jehovah's Witness for 50 years and is a presiding elder of Northeast Portland's Beaumont Congregation, said he's never heard of a case when it was associated with suicide. "I have a son who is disfellowshipped," he said. "We do see him. We have grandchildren and we don't want to lose contact, but we don't socialize much." The hope when anyone is disfellowshipped, Hobart said, is that he or she will repent and ask to be reinstated in the congregation. "That happens frequently," he said. Repentance and reinstatement were apparently not in Robert Bryant's heart. The six bodies were taken Saturday to a crematory. Yellow crime scene tape still surrounded the home. A wooden plank barred the door facing the road. A bare light bulb near the door burned brightly. Signs of life disrupted could be seen in the most innocuous items. Children's bikes strewn around the yard, including a girl's bike with a pink basket. A bike helmet on the ground. Tools in the bed of a white pickup truck. A green trailer still attached. There were also signs of life moving on. A black cat on the front stoop. And sitting on the corner of the property, a pot of white mums left by someone who wanted to pay their respects.