Episode 25: Bad Karma: The Cult of Conscious Development of Body, Mind, and Soul, Pt. 1

True Crime Campfire

True Crime, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 January 2020

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cults are fascinating. Jonestown, Heaven’s Gate, Aum Shinrikyo, NXIVM. So often, people end up in these groups because they’re seekers, and they genuinely want to work toward a better world. Contrary to popular belief, people who end up in cults are often smart and well educated. Good people who march to a different drumbeat and have only the best intentions. But unfortunately, when a group dynamic forms around a charismatic and narcissistic leader, and people start molding their own realities to fit theirs, utopian visions can turn into dystopian realities. This is the bizarre story of a vision gone horribly wrong.

Terri Hoffman didn't seem like a prophet, at first glance. She looked more like somebody's grandma. But for decades, Hoffman ran a cult called Conscious Development of Body, Mind, and Soul--but many of her followers ended up disenchanted with her. They couldn't help but notice that she seemed to be enriching her bank account more than she enriched people's lives. And it went deeper than that. Before Conscious Development finally fizzled out, Terri and the cult would be linked to sixteen murders, suicides, APPARENT suicides and disappearances. Was Hoffman responsible? Was she a prophet, or a predator?

Sources:

https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/1982/december/rise-and-fall-of-a-north-dallas-cult-conscious-development/
https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2014/06/d-magazines-40-greatest-stories-death-in-a-north-dallas-cult/
https://truenoirstories.wordpress.com/2016/12/31/terri-hoffman/#:~:targetText=Murder%20of%20Jill%20Bounds,and%20became%20a%20popular%20psychologist.
https://unsolved.com/gallery/charles-southern/

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