Fugitive Cult Leader Was on Welfare When Seized

SAN DIEGO —  A religious cult leader wanted in the ritualistic slayings of a family in Ohio had been collecting welfare checks in the San Diego area for nearly a month while looking for work before he was arrested Sunday at a suburban San Diego motel, sources familiar with the case said Tuesday.

The disclosure surfaced as defrocked minister Jeffrey D. Lundgren, 39, made a brief court appearance Tuesday morning at which his lawyer formally declared that Lundgren was resisting extradition to Ohio. Lundgren’s wife and eldest son, also arrested Sunday for the Ohio killings, appeared at the same hearing and said through their lawyers that they, too, would fight extradition.

Lundgren applied for welfare in December and received $940 checks in December and January, a law enforcement source familiar with the case said Tuesday. While he collected the checks, sent to a Chula Vista motel, Lundgren and his family “all were applying for local, day-type jobs,” a federal agent said.

Federal agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms declined Tuesday to confirm the details of the welfare funds and said they still did not know what brought the family to San Diego County in mid-December.

Those agents, still seeking two of the 13 cult members indicted in the April killings of Dennis and Cheryl Avery and their three young daughters, intensified their search late Tuesday for the pair. The hunt was focused in San Diego, spokeswoman April Freud said, but she declined to elaborate.

Kathryn Renee Johnson, 36, and Daniel David Kraft, 25, were last spotted on Saturday in San Diego, Freud said.

At Tuesday’s seven-minute court hearing, San Diego County prosecutors began the lengthy process of extraditing Lundgren, along with his wife, Alice, and eldest son, 19-year-old Damon P. Lundgren, to Ohio. All three are being held in San Diego County jails without bail.

Lundgren and his son face five counts of aggravated murder in Ohio. If convicted, they could face the death penalty. Charges against Lundgren’s wife include five counts of conspiracy to commit murder.

The Lundgrens’ three younger children--ages 15, 10 and 9--have been placed with a relative in Missouri, federal agents said Tuesday. The three had been in “safe hands” in San Diego since the arrests of their parents and brother, agents had said.

The bodies of the Averys--Dennis, 49; his wife, Cheryl, 42; and their daughters, Trina, 13; Rebecca, 9; and Karen, 5--were found last week buried in a barn near Kirtland, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb. Each had been shot at least twice. The killings were not discovered until an informer mentioned them on New Year’s Eve, officials said.

The Averys were identified as one-time followers of Lundgren, who had declared himself the “prophet” of his own religion after his 1988 break with the Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints. That church is not related to the larger Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints based in Salt Lake City.

Federal agents arrested Lundgren, his wife and eldest son Sunday at the Santa Fe Motel in National City, where the entire family had been staying since early January. Before that, the Lundgrens had been staying at the Traveler Motel in Chula Vista. An employee of that motel said they checked in Dec. 14.