Just before Prabhupada’s death in 1977, the spiritual leader named a series of “gurus” who would continue his mission around the world. 

Ham was named as one of the gurus and by 1980 New Vrindaban had become one of the largest Hare Krishna centers in the world, which only gave Ham more power over the followers. 

After a group of men came on the property looking for one of their daughters, Ham became more militant and enlisted the help of follower and Vietnam veteran Thomas Drescher, also known as Tirtha, to provide protection. 

According to Tom Westfall, a former detective sergeant with Marshall County, by the time he arrived on the farm, Drescher already had a criminal record involving past situations where “violence was used.” 

Another New Vrindaban devotee that Ham often relied on was Charles St. Denis, also known as Chakradara. 

“He was a very tall man, very jolly, very cheerful, at the same time, very straightforward, fearless,” his son Bhima-Karma Saragrahi recalled.

St. Denis was known to skirt the rules and kept long hair, drank and smoked marijuana. He was also quick to call out hypocrisy and confronted Ham about rumors that he had been sexually active with construction workers on the farm.

“My father complaining directly and publicly about Kirtananda’s immoral activities definitely created a large rift between them from that time on,” Saragrahi said.

When the farm’s accountant, Daniel “Dan” Reid, known as Daruka, caught St. Denis having an affair with his wife, he turned to Ham for help. 

On June 10, 1983, Reid called St. Denis to come have a drink and bury the hatchet, but St. Denis didn’t realize that Drescher, Ham’s enforcer, was also secretly waiting at the home. St. Denis was never seen again. 

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For years, investigators would try to solve St. Denis disappearance, but in the meantime, the community was thriving financially. The religious group made its money by something called sankirtan, or devotional fundraising, and followers would often ask for donations at airports or sell literature. 

Under Ham’s direction, New Vrindaban moved away from traditional fundraising methods to petty crime. His followers went out in public and pretended to be raising money for other, more well-known charities like Meals on Wheels.

Although they didn’t have the proper copyright, they produced stickers and baseball caps promoting college teams to sell them to fans and had the women in the group go out in fundraising teams across the country.

“They would send the teams out on a college football weekend and the women would walk through the parking lots and they would assert, this is for Save the Children, this is for Lonely Children in America, whatever they could make up and sell this material which they were paying cents on the dollars for,” former FBI Agent Jeff Banwell said. “They would bring in close to a million dollars a weekend.”

Followers also alleged that Ham encouraged violence against women and there were reports of physical and sexual abuse of children at the school in the community.

“Kids got their arms broken from being yanked and roughly handled around, constantly being beaten in many different ways,” Saragrahi, once a student there himself, said.

Steve Bryant, a former devotee, planned to blow the whistle about the crimes going on at the farm.

“He was picking up momentum and getting more and more information, more and more first-hand accounts and he was also a catalyst, and I feel that he was emboldening people to talk,” said David Gold, Bryant’s former attorney.

But, before he could ever expose the activities, Bryant was killed on May 22, 1986. He was shot twice in the head while sitting in his parked van near a Hare Krishna temple in Los Angeles, UPI reported in 1991.