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Chapter 1: What warning does the episode give about sensitive topics?
Listen to all episodes of Scary Terry ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page or visit getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Binge, feed your true crime obsession. Before we get started, I just want to let you know that this episode does discuss suicide. So please listen with care.
Alice Hoffman had seen and heard enough. And she knew where the bodies were buried. She heard Terry claim that Devereaux was possessed by the Black Lords just months before she died. She'd gone to the cabin that day and found Glen Cooley dead of an overdose. Enough was enough. She was ready to leave Terry, even if her husband wasn't.
He and Terry were very involved at that point. And my mom was really unhappy. He would yell and scream at my mom a lot. Then they said that they were going to get a divorce.
Alice and Dawn would break up, but it wasn't a clean break.
So this is the weird part. Basically, they said, we're getting a divorce, we're going to sell the house, and when we sell the house, we're going to move to Bedford, and we're going to live in an apartment until the house sells, and then we're going to split the money and go our separate ways.
And Janet was the only kid left in the house with them.
We moved, and at this point, my brother had gone off to college.
Janet said her mom started drinking more heavily during this time. Sharing space with her soon-to-be ex would upset her. She'd want to escape, go to the bar.
And I'd be like, Mom, just stay at home. Just talk to me. And she wouldn't talk to us.
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Chapter 2: What led Alice Hoffman to consider leaving Terry?
He would spend a ton of time running her businesses, you know, whether it was making cassette tapes for some of the lessons, you know, getting books printed, going and taking care of their properties. I went camping with him a couple of times up at Cripple Creek and then spending hours in the documents looking for mineral rights for the land that they owned and things like that.
Don was less her lover than he was perhaps her servant, her devotee, a man who wouldn't question her.
Unfortunately, my brother and I were in the wedding with her daughters. Because we didn't know how to say no. You know, like, that was our dad. Okay, you want us to be in the wedding?
Okay, we were like... I remember my dad making fun of me not shaving for the wedding. But yeah, I mean, it was the typical conscious development crowd and the usual suspects that were there. Terry was wearing, I think it was a light blue dress, as I recall.
I remember some lady singing Amazing Grace. And to this day, I cannot stand to hear that song because it reminds me so much of that day. We were concerned about my dad, that he would maybe be the next one to go. Seems like when Terri gets tired of her husbands, she convinces them to end their life.
After that, like an explosion, shards of their lives together spun out in different directions. Alice would also get married again.
Now she ended up getting, you know, meeting a man pretty quickly and getting remarried pretty quickly.
Then their mother didn't really want to talk about CDBMS anymore. Janet moved out and would eventually marry too, have a career and a family of her own. Rick seemed to be the one member of the family who stayed close to Don, kept contact with dad after he married his spiritual teacher. Rick showed up at the house one day, where Dawn lived with Terry and her daughters.
She was like, oh, I guess you need to eat food, huh? So she's like, oh, okay, let me go round up some money. And so she went and rounded up like eight bucks or so and gave it to me and said, here you go, go buy whatever you want.
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Chapter 3: How did the divorce between Alice and Don unfold?
I left everything in my will to Terry so that we could avoid paying him. estate taxes. Government takes a big chunk if they get a chance, so this way she won't have to pay any estate taxes.
Like many people before him, Dawn left everything to Terry for reasons that still remain so unbelievable. After all these years of talking to people in her orbit, I can still hardly believe it.
Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi goes something like, and it is in dying that you are born to eternal life. And I firmly believe that. That death is just a transition from one life to another life. I'm not afraid of death. So I'm going to be in a much better place. For the first time in a long time, I won't be in any more pain. Well, I guess I'll line this up now. Let's see.
I love all of you very much. I wish I could be around. In the physical, I'll be around Only out of balance. But, I just wish I could be here to help you, but I won't be here, Elvin. Y'all love one another.
We, like, knew right away what had happened. And so my brother pretended for, like, you know, the first three days or first week. My brother went with Terry to the funeral home and helped make arrangements and stuff. And he also noticed how, like, cold she was. Like, she wasn't even upset. And how the guy at the funeral home asked what my dad did for a living. She just said, oh, he didn't work.
And my brother's like, yeah, he did. He did all those massages for people all day long, every day. So he made them put masseuse. And I remember he got so mad because she did that. And, you know, he just played it cool. Like, you know, I believe you. I'm going along with this just because this is just part of that process.
But we will, you know, knowing full well that we were going to do something because this is not right.
Jim Barclow, the attorney who repped Kroom in contesting Sandra Cleaver's will, heard about what happened with Don.
He reached out to my brother and introduced himself and said that he would like to represent us or whatever.
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