Wesson as a younger man with his daughters Marcus Wesson founded and controlled a personal christian sect that heavily diverged in theology from most of mainstream christianity. Namely that he believed that Jesus Christ was a vampire deity and that he was God himself. The entirety of his “congregation” composed of his family members, especially his biological daughters, step daughters, and nieces. Much of the doctrine Wesson taught in his “homemade church” revolved around grooming the daughters, stepdaughters, and nieces into intercourse with him, and he fathered several children with them. Something that also should be noted is that Wesson was captivated by David Koresh and the Waco incident of 1993. More specifically, he found common ground with Koresh’s polygamous practices, and decided that they both were on a divine duty to spreed their seeds. Some of Wesson's daughters and nieces After the daughters he conceived with the nieces, daughters, and step daughters grew of an age to his liking (usually about 7 or 8), they would be sexually abused and used to birth other children, and the pattern rinsed and repeated on a frequent basis for several years. As such, some of the children in his fold were his daughters, granddaughters, and grandnieces all in one. To be more specific, Wesson started his family by dating an older woman in his twenties after he was discharged from the Army, and had his eldest son with her. Wesson molested one of her daughters and married the girl when she was 14. They had 10 children together, including at least 3 daughters that he fathered more children with. Wesson was given a further supply of victims when one of his wife's sisters gave him custody of her 7 children following a drug arrest. Although the precise details are unclear, he was was also recorded to have conceived children with a minimal of two of the nieces. The female children were also forbidden from interacting with their brothers, male cousins, and mothers. His male and female children were both treated as servants, and were forced to clean his dreadlocks and scratch his armpits and head. When they became adults, he cannibalized their earnings. He kept his family in line with physical violence. Any acts of insubordination from the children and their mothers was punished with beatings with baseball bats and other blunt objects. In one reported incident, Wesson choked his legal wife for declaring her intent with leaving him with their children. His surviving family members also described him as being extremely possessive. One of his nieces disclosed to a reporter that she was brutalized by him for expressing interest in a boy her age. Wesson was essentially homeless and lived entirely off of welfare fraud and leeching on his adult children's salaries. Although he managed to pay for fast food for himself, his children were made to rummage from trashcans for their meals. Due to financial instability, he and his family squatted in scuttled boats, vacant houses, and abandoned buses. The situation simmered past the boiling point in 2004 when two escaped nieces and several other estranged family members turned to the courts to claim the children away from him. During a standoff with police, Wesson coerced one of his older "daughter wives”, 25 year old Sebhrenah, into shooting 8 of the other children and herself. The second eldest victim was another “daughter wife”, 17 year old Elizabeth, and the youngest were two 1 year old daughters and a 1 year old son. Although Wesson tried to proclaim innocence by citing the lack of gun powder residue on his hands, testimony of forcing suicide pacts from surviving family members damned him. Wesson during his trial A year after the massacre, Wesson was sentenced to death by California for the 9 murders, and was also convicted of several accounts of sexual abuse. As of 2023, he still theoretically retains a death sentence, despite the state’s current moratorium on capital punishment. Sources: 1.https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/survivors-recall-horror-of-wesson-mass-killing-3287074.php 2.https://abc30.com/marcus-wesson-central-fresno-mass-murders-in-crimes/5187507/ 3.https://murderpedia.org/male.W/w/wesson-marcus.htm 4.https://www.crimelibrary.org/notorious_murders/family/marcus_wesson/2.html
Um ... Okay. There are plenty of nutbars out there, though. Just think of the Westboro Baptist Church. *runs away in the opposite direction* Thank goodness that we in Australia don't seem to have too many people like that. Then again, in recent years, we had the Swanston St Massacre, and the Lindt Cafe Siege, and others. It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door...
I don't know a lot about it, but from what I understand that's pretty much what every cult is, except it isn't usually all kept in the family like that. The cult leader is always "God," to himself and his followers, who are damaged and weak-minded people. But yeah, the whole"Jesus was a vampire" angle is definitiely different. These guys have really powerful imaginations when it comes to their self-designed and self-oriented religions. All they need is to find the right kind of people—ones who are isolated and damaged and feel a strong need for someone to attach themselves to. They always isolate them from friends, family and society. If you want to utterly control people, you need to remove them from those kinds of healthy support systems and brainwash them to believe those people are evil, and that only he really understands them and knows what's best for them. This is the way certain kinds of abusers operate, but usually it's just in 1-on-1 relationships, often with some cheating going on as well. The cult leaders just expand the circle a bit. And I believe most cults involve the leader having sex with all the females, whatever their age. There's a rather intense movie called May (see below post) about a woman escaping from a cult. Sort of anyway, though even afterwards if I remember right the cult still had a strong hold on her mind. It's an indie flick, so I'm pretty sure it doesn't have a happy ending (I don't remember).
Don't know much, but they seemed to have quietly adopted their own lives without Wesson. Apparently, according to a SFGate article, a reporter on the scene helped at least some of them get back on their feet. Here is another ABC article that discusses some of the surviving childrens in depth. https://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/ma...rviving-family-speaks-abuse/story?id=11089648
