Sheela, the most incompetent villain in human history
The incompetence of movie villains is legendary. With hundreds of fanatical followers, all armed to the teeth with the latest weapons, they still somehow fail to kill the one hero in the story. Imperial stormtroopers in Star Wars, for example, cannot hit a human-sized target at a range of several meters. I always thought this was because the heroes all had plot armor. No real-life villain could be this competent, I thought, or they would never have risen to be the leader of a powerful organization.
Meet Sheela Ambalal Patel, former de facto cult leader of the Rajneesh commune. She had thousands of fanatical followers, including a “Rajneeshpuram Peace Force” armed with semi-automatic weapons. She had ether, tranquilizers, lethal drugs, and even a biological weapons laboratory. She launched the largest bio-terrorist attack in American history. Yet despite all that, she failed to kill a single person.
Rajneeshpuram
Rajneeshpuram was a commune founded in Oregon in 1981 by Indian guru Rajneesh. To the extent that Rajneesh had a coherent ideology — and considering that he promoted “the unity of opposites”, he probably didn’t — it centered around rejection of traditional values, importance of meditation, acceptance of free love, and embrace of materialistic desires. After being hounded out of India due to offending Indian religious sensibilities, he opted to buy land in Oregon and build a community from the ground up.
Shortly after arriving, Rajneeshees (also known as sannyasins) began offending Oregonian sensibilities no less than they did Indian ones. 1000 Friends of Oregon, an environmentalist group, immediately filed suit to stop the planned commune. Other neighbors opposed Rajneeshpuram due to land use conflicts, and Rajneeshpuram’s aggressive and uncompromising tactics didn’t win them any friends. These legal disputes would dog Rajneeshpuram throughout its existence, causing the commune to use more and more extreme measures against its enemies.
The demographics of Rajneeshpuram are not what most would expect. Despite the religion’s Indian origin and Indian founder, its adherents tended to be young, white, and highly educated, although the adherents took Indian names upon joining the cult. A disproportionate number of sannyasins had Master’s degrees; many were former professors, psychologists, or lawyers. Rajneeshpuram is yet another warning that education is not a guarantee against error, delusion, or even madness.
By the time the Rashneeshees relocated to America, Rajneesh had taken a “vow of silence”. This left his secretary and our villain, Sheela Ambalal Patel, in effective control of the cult.
Poisoning a County
By 1984, Rajneeshpuram’s legal opponents were gaining the upper hand, and its building permits were being denied left and right. Never one to take no for an answer, Sheela hit upon her brilliant plan: rig the Wasco County election to seat her own judges on the Circuit Court, who would then rule in favor of the commune.
Sheela’s two-part plan went like this. First, bus in 3000 homeless people from all around the country, giving them food and shelter in return for their vote. Second, grow salmonella and use it to poison the non-Rajneeshee electorate to prevent them from voting.
The Wasco County clerk, not being an idiot, thwarted the first part of the plan by forcing all voters registering to vote to prove their eligibility. The homeless, who did not reside in the county, would not be eligible. One of Rajneeshpuram’ candidates, being an idiot, thwarted herself by trying to vote under both her birth name and her new sannyasin name. The fraud was discovered, and she was disqualified from the race.
The second part of Sheela’s plan had been in gestation for quite a period. Sheela and the commune doctor Puja (aka Diane Yvonne Onang) had bought salmonella from a medical lab in Seattle, and were culturing it in a biological weapons lab. On August 29, 1984, they had a trial run. They put salmonella into the water of two visiting Wasco County commissioners, causing both to fall ill and one to be hospitalized. As another test run, they spread salmonella on produce in grocery stores, on doorknobs, and on urinal handles in The Dalles —but without any success.
In September and October 1984, Sheela orchestrated the biggest bioterror attack in American history. Delivery teams carried bags of brown liquid, full of concentrated salmonella cultures, and spread it onto the food or salad dressing at 10 salad bars across Wasco County. These attacks poisoned 751 people, causing 45 hospitalizations. One of the victims was an infant born two days after its mother was infected, and was initially given a 5% chance of survival. Another was 87 years old. Miraculously, the infant survived, as did every other person poisoned by Sheela.
Amazingly, this attack was only intended to be yet another trial run. If successful, Sheela would execute a new, presumably even bigger, attack on the night before election day. The fact that Sheela’s plan to bus in the homeless to vote was thwarted meant that this massive attack was called off. In fact, all that Sheela’s test runs accomplished was to make Oregonians deeply suspicious of Rajneeshpuram, causing them to turn out in record numbers on election day to fight Rajneeshpuram’s interests. The election was a disaster, with none of Sheela’s preferred candidates being elected.
Drugging the Homeless
Sheela now had a new problem on her hands. The 3000 homeless people in the commune were creating social and financial problems, especially as many of them had serious mental illnesses. Most of them, now aware that they were being used as political tools, demanded to be bused back to their cities of origin. They had all been promised a return bus ticket if they ever regretted coming to Rajneeshpuram, but Sheela did not have enough money to fulfill her promises. Fights broke out, and the homeless became an unruly mob.
To solve the problem, Sheela served the homeless beer spiked with the tranquilizer Haldol. She then dumped the homeless in towns around Oregon in the dead of night, never to be heard from again. The fact that most of the homeless — including this man interviewed by CBC, who was not even around long enough to be drugged — preferred living on the street to being fed, clothed, and sheltered in the commune speaks volumes about Sheela’s dictatorial tactics.
This tactic of dumping thousands of homeless into small towns so enraged Oregonians that, according to the newspaper The Oregonian:
The spectacle deeply worried state and local authorities. They feared locals would be so angered by the callous act that they would strike out at the commune. The Oregon State Police and the National Guard devised contingency plans, with Guard commanders promising the governor they could mobilize 10,000 soldiers if necessary.
Murdering County Officials
Having utterly failed in rigging the election, Sheela opted for the even less democratic tactics of arson, drugging, and murder. First up was the Wasco County planner Dan Durow. Sheela ordered her followers to burn down his office by throwing lit cardboard boxes soaked in lighter fluid, but this was only mildly successful. It took only two weeks for the office to be restored.
Later, in a hearing about Rajneeshpuram’s unsafe electrical wiring practices, Sheela had the tranquilizer haloperidol put into the drinking water. Sheela won the skirmish, but lost the war — the poisoning was successful, but the hearing went against Rajneeshpuram anyhow.
Poisoning transitioned to outright attempted murder in St. Vincent Hospital in 1985. There, Sheela’s friend Puja was attempting to find county politician James Comini, who was recovering from ear surgery. The idea was to inject poison — possibly a mixture of adrenaline and potassium — into Comini’s IV drip to stop his heart. Unfortunately, Comini was not on an IV drip at the time Instead of finding another way to kill Comini, she got into a getaway car and headed back to Rajneeshpuram.
Among other targets of attempted murder was Charles Turner, U.S. attorney for Oregon, who was investigating immigration fraud at the commune. The fraud was in no small part due to Sheela, who ordered American members to enter into sham marriages with foreign members so they could stay in the US. Sheela’s plan was to have Ma Shanti Bhadra (aka Jane Elsea) gun him down with an untraceable pistol on his way home. Shanti Bhadra and the commune’s Chief Financial Officer, Prem Savita (formerly Sally-Anne Croft), set up shop in the McDonalds opposite his office to monitor his movements. Eventually, they settled upon the parking garage of his workplace as the scene of the crime. One of the conspirators was to pretend to have car trouble, while the other would take advantage of the distraction to shoot him.
After this plan was laid down, it was mysteriously never carried out. According to The Oregonian, this was because Sheela’s leadership was being challenged from within, and she was too distracted to make the final decision on the murder. Thus, yet another one of Sheela’s horrendous schemes comes to an anticlimactic end.
Murdering other sannyasins
Not satisfied with poisoning innocent townsfolk, drugging the homeless, or murdering politicians, Sheela turned her sights on other sannyasins.
Since the bombing of Portland’s Hotel Rajneesh on July 29, 1983, Sheela had been steadily increasing her authoritarian control over the commune. The bombing was quickly determined to be the work of an extremist Islamic group, Jamaat ul-Fuqra. Instead of blaming Jamaat ul-Fuqra, or even Muslims in general, Sheela cast suspicion on all outsiders. She used the attack as justification to form the “Rajneeshpuram Peace Force”, a de facto police force armed with semi-automatic weapons and helicopters. She installed listening devices throughout the commune, including in the home of Rajneesh himself — without the knowledge of anyone but a close circle of insiders.
The first (former) sannyasin to be targeted was Helen C. Byron, who had left the movement and won $1.7 million in a lawsuit against Rajneesh Foundation International. According to the commune’s own notes:
Helen Byron trial — Ava sent to Portland to follow her & poison her. Sheela told her to do it. Puja gave her the stuff…they failed, Sheela really pissed off.
Apparently, Ava went to Bryon’s hotel, but could not find any time when Bryon was alone.
Near the end of the commune’s existence, Sheela began to become suspicious of Devaraj (formerly George Meredith), Rajneesh’s personal doctor, and Vivek, his personal caretaker. Unlike virtually everyone else in the commune, Devaraj and Vivek had direct access to Rajneesh — and were thus a threat to Sheela’s power.
Sheela hatched a plot to kill Vivek. The plan was for Ava, Julian, and Su (born Susan Hagan and now head of security at Rajneeshpuram) to sneak into Vivek’s room while she was sleeping. They would then put an ether-soaked rag onto her face, rendering her immobile. This would be followed by a lethal injection of either potassium or adrenaline. Puja had told the group that potassium would cause a great deal of pain while adrenaline would not, but was unable to describe the symptoms Vivek would experience.
Yoga Vidya (a.k.a. Ann Phyllis McCarthy) rearranged the guard schedule so that fellow conspirators would be on guard at the time of the murder. Puja gave Su the ether-soaked rag. Ava carried the lethal injection. Julian carried a handset to maintain communications with the guard posts. They got a key to Vivek’s room…and found that it did not work. They had gotten the wrong key. Foiled by a key, they returned to Sheela, who became angry and presumably upbraided them for their incompetence. Their incompetence was further demonstrated when Ava and Su became ill from the ether that was intended for Vivek.
The plan to kill Devaraj was initially very similar. Sheela claimed in a meeting in June 1985 that Devaraj was planning to kill Rajneesh, according to the commune’s records:
6/85 meeting Sheela said DR was going to kill Bhagwan. Everyone freaked out. Said they were going to poison DR during festival. Ava said no. Sheela told her to shut up.
Sheela sent several people to kill Devaraj, including Ava, Su, Julian, and Shanti Bhandra — the same Shanti Bhandra who would later unsuccessfully try to assassinate Charles Turner. Julian carried the ether, while Ava and Shanti Bhandra carried a syringe of poison each. They had intended to sneak up on Devaraj while he was asleep, Puja having replaced his regular medicine with sedatives beforehand. However, after Julian opened Devaraj’s door, he discovered that Devaraj was still awake. The plan was aborted, and “Sheela was angry and disappointed” — again.
Following a few attempts to poison Devaraj’s coffee, the next serious attempt to kill Devaraj came during the annual world festival of July 6, 1985. Shanti Bhandra, apparently giving up on ether, talked to Devaraj while plunging a needle into his flesh and injecting him with adrenaline. Devaraj immediately recognized this as a murder attempt, yelling “Oh, so this is what it’s come to, has it?” Devaraj got himself to Bend Hospital and was rescued from the brink of death.
Epilogue
By the end of August 1985, Rajneeshpuram was falling apart. The many legal problems it faced drained its funds and forced it to stop construction of new buildings. The fact that Rajneesh obsessively demanded more Rolls-Royces despite already having a fleet of 93 didn’t help the commune’s finances.
On September 23, 1985, a grand jury indicted Rajneesh, Sheela, and other members of the leadership council for immigration fraud. Sheela and Rajneesh had both gotten wind of these proceedings and attempted to flee. Sheela flew to Germany, but was discovered and extradited back to the US. Rajneesh attempted to flee to Bermuda, but was arrested during a stopover in Charlotte. These developments lead to a mass exodus from Rajneeshpuram. In December 1985, Rajneeshpuram came to the end, 4 years after it was established.
Compared to the magnitude of their crimes, all of the would-be murderers received exceptionally light sentences. Sheela was sentenced to 20 years of prison after pleading guilty to attempted murder, but was released after only 39 months for good behavior. She moved to Switzerland and bought two nursing homes — an act that presumably kept their residents up at night. A Swiss court convicted her of “criminal acts preparatory to the commission of murder” in connection to her attempted murder of Charles Turner, but she was only sentenced to time served. Rajneesh was deported back to India and died in 1989, having served no jail time in any country.
Ava cooperated fully with the prosecution, and received complete immunity from prosecution. Much of what we know about Sheela’s plots comes from her. Prem Savita (Sally-Anne Croft) and Su (Susan Hagan) were sentenced to 5 years for their role in attempting to assassinate Charles Turner. Shanti Bhandra (Catherine Jane Stork), who tried to kill both Turner and Devaraj, received only 5 years of probation. Finally, Puja (Diane Yvonne Onang), the doctor who cultured the commune’s salmonella and provided the poisons used for lethal injections, served only 39 months in prison.
As a poisoner or a murder, Sheela was as incompetent as anyone can be. But her incompetence likely saved both herself and her disciples from anything more than a slap on the wrist from the justice system, despite committing crimes as heinous as bioterrorism and attempted murder.