Murder in the Temple of Love

The place: Temple of Love, Liberty City.

Eyewitnesses: 30 to 50 people, Yahweh disciples.

Victim: Leonard Dupree, 22, former U.S. karate champion.

Date: Autumn 1983.

Prosecution: None.

Miami's law enforcement community -- the Metro-Dade homicide bureau, the FBI, the U.S. Attorney and the Dade State Attorney -- heard about the episode years ago.

No one in law enforcement wants to say much about it publicly. On the record, authorities don't even want to say that a crime occurred.

But a legal paper obtained from the Dade State Attorney's Office, an interview with a Yahweh defector who said he was an eyewitness, and a 129-page sworn statement filed in an unrelated civil lawsuit all tell about a bloody homicide in the Temple of Love.

From the sworn statement: "All the other brothers jumped on top of him, and they beat him to death."

Various law enforcement agencies have taken statements from a number of professed eyewitnesses, The Herald learned. Some described a frenzied mob with weapons -- a broomstick, a shepherd's staff, a metal jack.

"I have no comment," said Dade State Attorney Janet Reno. "I don't comment. . . . I'm not commenting on why I'm not commenting."

Two detectives on the case, Rex Remley and John King, won't comment, and their commander, Wayne McCarthy, said only that police are investigating "reports" and "allegations" of a beating death in the temple.

U.S. Attorney Dexter Lehtinen declined to answer telephone calls on the topic.

Attorney Ellis Rubin, who represents the white-robed Yahwehs, said he doesn't know anything about the Dupree case.

"I don't think it was an official ceremony at the temple," Rubin said.

The Dupree case is one of 14 homicides and disappearances since 1981 that investigators suspect are linked to Yahwehs.

"If these things are true and did happen, where are the charges?" Rubin asked.

The victims were mostly poor. Seven were black and seven were white. Most died with little notice. Two were buried in potter's field.

Most of the cases were not prosecuted.

Yahweh Ben Yahweh, 54, the self-proclaimed "son of God" who leads the sect, is a charismatic black preacher of power and influence. He commands an $8 million real estate portfolio in Dade and a small army of religious-political volunteers. He preaches an anti-drug message of hope and self-sufficiency to the disenchanted.

The sect leader is currently on a nationwide speaking tour -- a "pilgrimage" -- "touching base" with his supporters, attorney Rubin said.

At a civil trial last year, Yahweh testified he had no knowledge of anyone ever being beaten at the temple. He denied ever flogging a follower or ordering an execution.

"Never in my life," Yahweh said.

"He has some crazy followers," Rubin said. "Does that mean Yahweh Ben Yahweh is responsible for what they did? That's probably a question that a jury is going to have to answer."

Any formal charges, the Miami law enforcement community realizes, would prompt instant countercharges of religious and racial persecution.

"Anytime you investigate an organization, be it racial, political or religious, you have to tread very lightly," said McCarthy, the homicide commander.

The homicide cases, long given low priority, are beset with problems. Witnesses, who abandoned their real names for Yahweh names when they entered the sect, are hard to locate. Often, they are afraid to talk. Sometimes they "don't remember" their names or their birthplaces.

"The state is ill-equipped to deal with these types of organizations," said Assistant State Attorney Michael Band. "The state doesn't have the resources. Cases like this are more suited to the federal government."

No case is as strange as the karate case, with its 30 to 50 possible witnesses.

Leonard Dupree, handsome, long-legged, impressionable, grew up in New Orleans, son of church-going Baptists. At 14, he took up karate with coach Ferdinand Bigard. He trained three hours a day, six days a week at the Desire Community Center. At 20, he won the U.S. Karate Association championship.

"When he dropped an ax kick, it was like a ton of bricks falling on your head," said Eric O'Neal, who trained with Dupree.

Then, after a hitch in the Army, the karate champ traded his black belt for white robes.

"Sheets," his father, Lartius Dupree, called the Yahweh attire. "He said he was going to Miami to see the Black Messiah at a feast. He was supposed to be back in two weeks."

Said coach Bigard: "We were hoping that one day he'd walk into the gym again."

But Leonard Dupree never made it home.

In September 1983, he had borrowed $200, packed a blue fold-up bag with his karate uniform and white sheets, hung a Star of David necklace around his neck, and caught a ride to Miami. A couple of months later, Lartius and Mary Dupree had the Salvation Army check on Leonard at The Temple of Love. He wasn't there. It wasn't until three years later that the Dupree family heard anything about their son. Metro homicide detective John King came and knocked on their door.

"Something had happened," said the father. "The detective mentioned foul play. . . . He said he thought the Yahwehs were involved. . . . He said something about 50 people. He didn't give us much hope. We gave him pictures of Leonard and dental records. He told us not to talk about it much because there was an investigation."

In a civil lawsuit in 1987, Legal Services attorney Barbara Malone took the 129-page sworn statement from an ex-Yahweh elder, Lloyd Clark, and the episode became public record.

"There was another guy that was killed right there on the premises," Clark testified. "He was a karate expert. He was supposed to have been sent down to kill Yahweh Ben Yahweh."

The matter also came up in a criminal case that year. Defense attorney Jeffrey Weinkle declared in a court motion, obtained from the State Attorney's Office, that "independent witnesses consisting of both civilians and law enforcement officers" had corroborated an account of a homicide at the temple.

Recently, The Herald tried to identify possible witnesses and find out what they said.

The FBI asked The Herald not to publish any names. Said spokesman Paul Miller: "Printing the names of witnesses or potential witnesses could mean a death sentence."

One Yahweh defector (name deleted) lives in another state.

He said he was in the sewing room at the Temple of Love, 2766 NW 62nd St., where maybe 50 people assembled. Among them were a dozen or so children.

It happened, he said, on the Yahweh Day of Atonement, the holy day when Jews around the world seek forgiveness for their sins.

He said a karate star named "Dupree" and Yahweh Ben Yahweh exchanged words.

His account:

"Do you want to hurt me?" Yahweh asked Dupree.

"No, I just want to kiss your feet," Dupree replied.

"You're a karate expert?" Yahweh asked him. "Well, we have a karate expert."

In his statement, Clark, the former elder, said that although he didn't see the confrontation, the name of Yahweh's karate expert was "Amri."

"So, they had this big duel on the other part of the temple, down on 62nd, and he beat Amri, he knocked Amri out like in two punches."

Afterward, according to the court motion, Yahweh Ben Yahweh instructed one of his followers: "Get" him.

Although the three accounts conflict in detail, all portrayed the karate champ as an enemy of Yahweh.

The court motion depicted him as an "undercover FBI agent." The defector said he was a "Muslim infiltrator." Clark testified the karate expert "had been sent down to kill Yahweh Ben Yahweh."

Dupree's parents said he was not a spy, a Muslim or a killer.

Here is the defector's account. The Herald is deleting names:

"(Name deleted) hit him with a staff. (Name deleted) came and started beating him in the head with a jack. (Name deleted) had a broomstick and poked his right eye out."

One woman was so upset she ran out the door. Someone brought her back and made her hit Dupree.

Someone locked the doors. The crowd was in a frenzy.

"Some people were hollerin', 'That's what he gets for being a hypocrite.' "

Clark testified: "Yahweh Ben Yahweh made every person, children, mothers, old and young, lay hands on this guy. . . . So if anyone talked, they would be" implicating themselves.

Dupree died on the floor, his body mutilated, the defector said.

Later, four disciples took off their Star of David necklaces and changed from their white robes to their street clothes, or "dead Jacob clothes," according to the defector.

They wrapped the body in two large plastic bags, put it in the back of a beige pickup, and headed west on Alligator Alley. They took along fishing rods to make it look like they were going fishing, he said.

The court motion said the body was "discarded in an unknown location in the Everglades."

One of the four men on the "disposal team" (name deleted) is a 49-year-old Opa-locka resident, the defector said.

Other possible witnesses believed to have been sect members at the time:

* A Midwesterner (name deleted): "A lot of wrong went on. . . . I've been subpoenaed. . . . I can understand why some people think they're going to get their heads cut off, but I know how to protect myself."

* Male (name deleted), now in prison: "That's no part of me, and I don't want any part of them," he told a prison guard, who relayed the message.

* Male (name deleted), 18, an aspiring track star: "I remember they whooped up the Jamaica dude pretty good. . . . I planned my escape. . . . I missed my childhood."

* Male, (name deleted), 22, father on drug probation: "I just got fed up and left. . . . I wish I could turn the clock back 10 years and start over again. . . . I don't trust anyone. . . . I didn't tell them (the police) much. . . . I have 104 problems as it is and I don't need another."

* Male (name deleted), 21, part-time janitor wearing a beeper and a Yahweh T-shirt: "It was great, and that's all I'm going to say."

* Male (name deleted), 43, former crime fighter. Moved, left no forwarding address.

* Male (name deleted), 20, victim of child abuse: Someone at an address he listed said he didn't want to talk to anyone.

It's too late for prosecutors to take testimony from some witnesses.

Seth Adam Israel, 31, whose real name was Willie Livingston, died of a gunshot wound in the back during a drug dispute at the Turf Motel, 7000 NW 27th Ave., on Dec. 20, 1987.

Enoch Israel, a 300-pound disciple, is missing and presumed dead.

Besides witness problems, prosecutors and police have other obstacles.

"We don't have the proof that . . . someone died with a certain name at that location," said Metro's McCarthy.

What's more, "We don't have a body," he said.

Occasionally, though, prosecutors try such cases anyway. The most famous in Florida: the Chillingworth murder case. A jury convicted two killers for the drowning at sea of a Palm Beach Circuit Court judge and his wife. Their bodies, weighted with lead and tossed into the Gulf Stream, were never recovered.

In the Dupree case, police figured for a while that they might be close to recovery of a body. A witness tried to take them to the site. He couldn't find it.

Body or no body, Leonard Dupree's father thinks his son is dead.

"The detective wouldn't tell me very much," Lartius Dupree said recently. "It seems like they're dragging their feet and I don't know why. For some reason, it is all very hush-hush."

In the court motion filed in another Yahweh case, attorney Weinkle implied the lesson followers learned from the karate homicide: Shut up. Or find yourself "gator food."