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Wednesday, August 9, 2023

Bethany Deaton's Sex Cult Death

     Bethany Ann Leidlein, a bright, ambitious and spiritual person, grew up in Arlington, Texas. In 2005, the 20-year-old graduated magna cum laude in English and Spanish from Southwestern University. While enrolled at the university in Georgetown, Texas, she met Tyler Deaton and his friend Micah Moore. Deaton, a domineering and charismatic young man from Corpus Christi, had been a member of the National Honor Society at Calallen High School. At Southwestern, a small liberal arts school affiliated with the Methodist Church, he played jazz piano and led prayer groups in the college chapel. A campus spiritual leader, he became known for his belief that "God glorifies in your having fun."

     After Bethany and Tyler graduated from Southwestern University the two of them, joined by Micah Moore and a handful of other young men, moved to the Kansas City, Missouri suburb of Grandview where they became members of a fundamentalist Christian church called the International House of Prayer (IHOP). In May 2009 Bethany and Tyler completed a six-month religious program at IHOP University.

     In the summer of 2012, after Tyler and Bethany were married, they moved, along with his male religious friends and followers into a large, old house in Grandview. Having gone back to school and earned a degree in nursing, Bethany worked as a registered nurse at a local hospital. She and her male roommates had evolved into a cult-like religious group led by her husband. The Grandview house they lived in became sort of a church.

     At ten o'clock on the night on October 30, 2012, Jackson County (Missouri) sheriff's deputies were called to investigate the body of a woman found in the back of a van parked near Longview Lake. The dead woman turned out to be Bethany Ann Deaton.

     Bethany's head had been covered by a white plastic bag. In the Ford Windstar van deputies recovered a notepad upon which someone had written what appeared to be a suicide note. It read: "My name is Bethany Deaton. I chose this evil thing. I did it because I wouldn't be a real person and what is the point of living if it is too late for that. I wish I had chosen differently a long time ago. I knew it all and refused to listen. Maybe Jesus will save me."

     In the van's cup-holder sat an empty 100-count bottle that had once held Acetaminophen pills. While most experienced homicide investigators would have considered Bethany Deaton's death suspicious, the Jackson County Coroner's Office classified it as a suicide. The plastic bag over her head, the empty pill bottle and the suicide note had the look of a staged suicide.

     Bethany Deaton's parents claimed her body and had her buried in Arlington, Texas without an autopsy. According to Bethany's online obituary, she had been "a lover of books, writing, nature, deep conversations, dance, worship and, most of all, Jesus."

     On November 9, 2012, one of Bethany Deaton's male roommates, 23-year-old Micah Moore, showed up at the Grandview Police Department with something to confess. He informed the detective who spoke to him that Bethany Deaton had not committed suicide because he had murdered her. He had pulled the plastic bag over her head and had held it there "until her body shook."

     According to Micah Moore, he, Tyler Deaton and the other male members of the spiritual clan had been sexually assaulting Bethany for months. They all had sex with her after drugging her with an antipsychotic drug called Seroquel. (This medication had been prescribed to a member of the sect.) Micah Moore said he had video-taped the group rapes on his tablet computer. He told the detective that he had also confessed his role in the rapes and murder to his pastor. Moore said he had written poems about Bethany Deaton's sexual assaults.

     Micah Moore informed the Grandview detective that the victim's husband, Tyler Deaton, had talked him into killing Bethany and making it look like a suicide. In the weeks prior to her death, Bethany had been seeing a counselor. Tyler Deaton, according to Moore, had been worried that she might report the group rapes to the therapist. Moore also confessed that after the men raped the drugged-up woman, they had consensual sex with each other.

     Following Micah Moore's stunning murder confession, the authorities in Jackson County, Missouri re-classified Bethany Deaton's manner of death as a criminal homicide. Her cause of death: asphyxiation by suffocation. On November 10, prosecutor Jean Peters charged Micah Moore with first degree-murder. Tyler Deaton was not charged with a crime.

     Allen Hood, the president of IHOP University, distanced the school and the church from Tyler Deaton and his followers. He described Deaton as the leader of an independent, close-knit religious group that had operated separately "under a veil of secrecy."

     On November 28, 2012, Micah Moore's attorney, Melanie Morgan, announced that her client had recanted his confession. The lawyer described the confession as "bizarre, nonsensical and most importantly, untrue." Attorney Morgan went on to say that Moore was a "distraught and confused young man under extreme psychological pressure as a result of his friend Bethany's untimely suicide and the sudden removal of his spiritual leader, Tyler Deaton from their extremely close-knit religious community."

     On October 31, 2014, Jackson County prosecutor Jean Peters Baker dropped the charges against Micah Moore. Moore's DNA was not on the bag over Deaton's head and forensic document examination revealed that the suicide note had been written by her. Moore's attorney, Melanie Morgan, said her client's confession had been a "reactive psychotic episode triggered by the suicide of his friend."  

5 comments:

  1. Did this victim have seroquel or acetominophen in her body?
    Did she die from a drug overdose or asphyxiation?
    Would an English major write such an incoherant note?
    Was it in her handwriting?
    Were the keys to the vehicle in the car along with her note and empty pill bottle?
    If she was murdered then how did the murderer return to town?
    Was there an accomplice to drive him back to town?
    Were all computers, cell phones, ipads etc. seized by the investigators immediately after her body was found from all persons living in her house?
    Has her psychiatrist been interviewed by police to determine if she was suicidal?
    Or did the psychiatrist know of abuse going on?
    There are too many unanswered questions.
    It seems that the police did not conduct an accurate investigation into this tragedy.

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    1. Writing from Europe, this seems abhorrent. The body could have been ex-humed. I agree that computers should have been ex-humed and her counsellor interviewd. People who love Jesus do not suddenly decide to commit suicide.

      Christian couples are supposed to have a special first year of marriage, when they are apart with limited responsibilities. The husband is supposed to spend that year cheering up his new wife, not having her see a counsellor. I`ve just had a dream and seen a gang rape.
      I`m not saying that all dreams come from God but it could have. Why was a thorough police investigation not done/? Dangerous people are at large and should be locked up.

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    2. Excellent questions. The only one I can answer is that her body tested negative for Seroquel.

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  2. From the article it says that the hand writing was hers. The note is less incoherent than it might seem if one understands the context. Tyler Deaton was married to Bethany but never consummated the marriage and was in fact engaged in a homosexual relationship with Micah Moore, both before and after the marriage. Additionally he may have had other male lovers as well. Brittany had known that Tyler was gay but he and she became convinced that he had changed. He found himself attracted to her, thus the marriage. In the religious community and upbringing that they had, homosexuality was considered a choice. Brittany blamed herself for Tyler being gay.

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