Milk and Honey, Part 2: The Trial of Bethesda Christian Center's Business Manager James Eyre
Check-kiting, a diamond investment racket, and a debt to a Seattle mobster come to light during a trial that centered national attention on Wenatchee, Wa.
On March 17, 1980, James Eyre, business manager for Bethesda Christian Center church in Monitor, Wa. went on trial in Chelan County Superior Court. He faced 12 counts of first-degree theft and one count of “unlawful issuance of a bank check,” colloquially known as “check kiting.”
Eyre’s arrest triggered an I.R.S. probe, a state Department of Revenue investigation, and his trial garnered national media attention. The Chelan County Prosecutor at the time, Richard “Dick” Whitmore, called it “the biggest trial in the county in 100 years.”
It was certainly one of the hottest tickets in the county at the time, and folks lined up to get a seat in the courtroom. So many folks showed up, in fact, that the county auditor handed out tickets with numbers outside the courtroom, and only the people with numbers were allowed in. It was first come, first served.
At the heart of the scandal were two men, Bethesda’s Pastor Larry Titus and James Eyre, each laying the blame for the financial mismanagement at one another’s feet.
During the proceedings, the inner workings of Bethesda were revealed to a community that had been fascinated (some would say disturbed) by the charismatic Christian sect (some would say cult) since it took off under Titus’ leadership.
Titus, the silver-tongued, “well-coiffed” preacher from Ohio moved to the Wenatchee Valley to take over the failing Bethesda Christian Temple in East Wenatchee. The church moved to Monitor and the name was changed to Bethesda Christian Center. Over the course of a decade, Titus and his wife Devi transformed the organization into a religious and cultural force majeure. Bethesda owned a plane, a gas station, a radio station, a bookstore, and an unaccredited college. According to The Wenatchee World, Bethesda also had interests in many local businesses aside from those they owned outright. They established a publishing house that put out an international Christian Women’s Magazine called “Virtue,” which Devi edited. It was billed as the Christian alternative to “Good Housekeeping.”
The orchestra and choir were a singular focus of attention, as well as a draw for new members. Bethesda spawned affiliated churches in communities across the Northwest.
Larry and Devi’s lavish lifestyle became the talk of the town, as did the constant focus on giving. Bethesda members took out mortgages, leveraging homes and family farms to give the money to Bethesda. Titus encouraged members to cash out their retirement savings and give the money “to God” via Bethesda.
You can read more about the origins and rise of Bethesda in part 1 of this series.
Leading up to the trial it was revealed that Bethesda leaders had been running a diamond sales and investment scheme. It came to light that Chelan County Sheriff at the time, Ray Gross, was even involved.
While Gross said he “could neither confirm nor deny” he bought any diamonds, Sandy Wheeler, a local CPA and Bethesda board member said the sheriff bought two diamonds for a total of $6000, according to the Seattle P-I. Wheeler said he collected the money from Gross and gave it to Eyre before a trip to Israel, where Eyre had been acquiring the diamonds.
It wasn’t the first time Eyre faced charges related to financial crimes. He came to Wenatchee in 1973 following a forgery conviction in Soap Lake, where, as a substitute teacher, he was convicted of forging a check from the high school student body’s account.
The fact that Eyre had a previous conviction for forgery didn’t stop Titus from hiring Eyre as business manager in 1974 though. The knowledge of his conviction didn’t seem to have followed Eyre to Wenatchee either. He became known as the son of a steamship heiress and a wealthy inventor, who was raised by a nanny in Galveston, Texas.
By the time of his arrest near the end of 1979, Eyre was at the center of a financial house of cards that can only be described as an elaborate Ponzi scheme in which investments and loans were sought from new investors and lenders in order to pay outstanding debts owed to previous investors and lenders. Although quite a lot of the money seemed to have made its way into the pockets of Eyre and Titus.
During the course of the trial, Eyre testified that some of the money used to keep the church afloat had even come from a Seattle “underworld figure” named Frank Colacurcio.
On the stand, Eyre testified that he did all of it because Titus “was God” to him.
“I felt like Larry’s wish was my command,” Eyre said. “We robbed Peter to pay Paul. We used funds out of other accounts to do it.”
Eyre testified that every financial venture he undertook was at Titus’ urging and that at one point Titus even suggested hiring “coverup men” from Atlanta to purchase property for Bethesda in other people’s names.
Weeping on the stand, Eyre told the court that Titus’ lust for the finer things in life had him constantly coming up with new ways to fund Larry and Devi’s lifestyle. When he couldn’t come up with the money from loans or new investments, he would front it himself, calling them “involuntary advances.”
Among other things, the funds went to pay for carpet in the nursery of the church, Bethesda staff salaries, church choir travel trips, a new car for Titus’ mother, and a diamond ring Eyre said Titus wanted.
According to Eyre, he was basically a slave to Titus – body and soul.
“I love him with all my heart. He would tell me that we had a spiritual marriage,” Eyre testified. “We had a perfect balance – he was my head. I was Nehemiah; he was Moses. I would have died for him. I would have jumped off this building if he had asked me to.”
Eyre’s lawyer Bernice Bacharach, citing bank statements, said these “involuntary advances” amounted to $794,270.73. On top of that, the church owed him $81,845.90 in unpaid salary. The total amount Titus and Bethesda owed Eyre, according to Bacharach, was $876,116.63 in total.
When Titus took the stand he painted a different picture.
He said Eyre would often tuck cash offerings from Bethesda members into his pocket, that he kept church offerings locked in the trunk of his car, and had a near-fetish for crisp $100 bills.
“He said he did not like one-dollar bills,” Titus said on the stand. “He liked to pass out hundred dollar bills at every occasion possible. I’ve never seen him without one.”
He testified that Eyre kept the church books under “lock and key” so church elders could not see them. Titus said he had no idea that Eyre’s personal funds and church funds were being intermingled until the summer before the trial when he was made aware of what was going on.
When questioned by Bacharach the exchange became “terse,” according to the Seattle P-I. P-I Reporter Laura Parker wrote that Titus faltered several times in his testimony and when his answers seemed evasive, Bacharach’s questions took on a sarcastic tone.
Parker quotes one such exchange over a shopping trip in which Eyre bought Titus new suits at a local department store.
Bacharach: “In other words, you were just a mannikin?”
Titus: “I had the liberty to say which ones I liked and didn’t like.”
Bacharach: “Are you sure you didn’t tell Mr. Eyre you needed the suits?”
Titus: “I wouldn’t rule that out as a possibility. But it wasn’t like me.”
When asked if he knew the funds that paid for trips, cars and clothes were church expenses, Titus said no.
Prosecutor Dick Whitmore got Eyre to provide more details about his own financial history under cross-examination. Eyre said under oath that he moved to Wenatchee in 1973 with a net worth of $40,500, but owed a debt of $50,000 to a friend. He said he paid off that personal loan in 1976 by refinancing his home and taking out loans from Columbia Federal Savings and Loan, Seattle-First National Bank and Wenatchee realtor Ray Click.
According to Bacharach, Bethesda owed Eyre $876,116 by 1979, but Eyre didn’t outline how he was able to afford to loan Bethesda the nearly $2 million he said he had given them in “involuntary advances” during that period of time.
He also didn’t explain why he had been taking personal loans to give to the church rather than have the church take out loans on its own behalf under the direction of Titus and the board.
Here’s an exchange between Prosecutor Whitmore and Eyre, as reported by the AP, after Whitmore asks Titus why he, and not Bethesda, were taking out the loans.
Eyre: “That would have been fine if Bethesda could have obtained credit.”
Whitmore: “Is your credit better?”
Eyre: “Yes.”
Whitmore: “How did you manage to establish that quality of credit?”
Eyre: “I can’t answer that. I don’t know.”
Whitmore: “How were you able to go from a net worth of minus-$10,000 to the point where your credit was better than Bethesda’s?”
Eyre: “I can’t answer that. I don’t know.”
Whitmore reviewed the list of loans Bacharach submitted on behalf of Eyre and compared them to Bethesda’s records of withdrawals from church accounts. According to the AP, the comparison revealed a complicated series of transfers that showed a commingling of funds that made it hard to distinguish where Eyre’s finances started and Bethesda’s ended.
In other testimony that day, Laura Phillips, a teller at Columbia Federal Savings and Loan, testified that Titus accompanied Eyre during transactions involved in the charges.
By March 29, both sides rested their cases and the jury went into deliberation.
The next day the jury announced that Eyre was acquitted of all charges.
Eyre wept. Bacharach was “delighted” and Whitmore was disappointed. He said the jury had been swayed by Bacharach’s argument that Eyre had been used as a “scapegoat” by Titus and church officials.
Afterward, one juror who asked to remain anonymous told the AP that the jury did believe Eyre was a scapegoat.
“None of us felt good about the decision… We were all a little depressed,” the juror said. “Our hands were tied by the instructions and the law. The prosecution did not give us enough evidence … to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was guilty.”
But Eyre wasn’t out of the woods yet. He was still in jail on a $1 million dollar bond, and the next day Whitmore filed eight new charges against him, according to a UPI story in the Spokane Chronicle. The charges stemmed from the diamond investment scheme and the victims of these alleged crimes included Bethel Christian Fellowship of Ellensburg and KIAM-FM Radio of Wenatchee.
“I’m shocked,” Bacharach said in an AP story. “We’ve already had a trial about his diamond investments. I objected to inclusion of the diamond investments in this trial, but it was let in. They can’t try it again.”
Eyre’s bond for the second set of charges was set at $5,000. He posted bail later that day and was released ahead of his next trial, which was set for April 21.
To Be Continued – And Where Titus is Now
For now, this is the right place to leave James Eyre. My word count, and the average attention span, are both finite things. I’ll pick back up on Eyre and tell the rest of his story (as best I can) in part 3 of this series.
Before the end of this piece it’s important to note that not long after Eyre was acquitted in this trial, Larry and Devi moved out of state. Devi continued to edit Virtue Magazine, one of Bethesda’s most successful ventures, for a while. But they sold the publication not long after that. It continued to be published by a company in Oregon until the mid-90s.
In 1981, Larry became senior pastor at Trinity Fellowship in Amarillo, Texas, according to Scott Sailer, a former employee. In 1984 they moved to Camp Hill, Pennsylvania where he became senior pastor at Christ Community Church.
In 1992, Larry and Devi established “Kingdom Global Ministries.”
“KMI funds world ministry projects and today maintains vibrant missions relationships in Israel, Honduras, Mexico, China, India, Thailand, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Brazil, West Africa, Philippines, and several nations in Europe,” Sailer wrote. “Larry travels regularly to these nations, teaching and ministering in churches, conferences, conventions, and leadership seminars side by side with the pastors and missionaries in partnership with KMI.”
According to tax returns, the organization brought in $581,292 in 2017. Larry’s compensation that year was $104,463. In 2014, KGM reported $935,005 in total revenue.
They also established a project called “The Mentoring Mansion,” which Sailer describes as “a ministry designed for women and directed today restoring the dignity and sanctity of the home.”
Larry and Devi both authored books that were published in multiple languages. She also kept up a regular international speaking schedule until she became ill. In December 2022, Devi died of cancer.
What’s Next
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In addition to binders full of newspaper clippings on Bethesda and the Eyre trial, I also have a copy of a forensic audit of Bethesda completed by a Seattle accounting firm in 1980. I also have a written account of what happened, according to Bethesda elder Sandy Wheeler, and a lengthy email thread between Titus and a former Wenatchee Valley College student who interviewed him about his time at the helm of Bethesda.
I also have pretty much every issue of Virtue Magazine and a handful of Bethesda tapes featuring Larry, Devi, and even Larry’s mother Rachel, preaching. I’ve got enough to write a book about Bethesda, to tell you the truth. For that, I’d like to thank the ex-members and others who have provided me with so much source material. I couldn’t have put these pieces together without your help.
So in my next piece, I’ll follow up on what happened to Eyre and we’ll take a look at Bethesda’s finances. We’ll also hear from Wheeler and Titus about what happened in their own words.
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