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PHELPS DAY CARE PROVIDER FROM HELL

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Eric Hoffer

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Jun 1, 1997, 3:00:00 AM6/1/97
to

This is the story of a nearly disbarred former lawyer name Betty
Phelps (married to Fred Phelps, Jr.) who does nightmarish day care in
her home. Only Phelps brats need apply otherwise the 'day care' might
get turned in as child abuse. See today's installment (Part 5) of
"Addicted to Hate" and learn about the Phelps Family Values.

------Posted via Billyboard News------
http://www.billyboard.com
Free Public Usenet WebReader

Eric Hoffer

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Jun 1, 1997, 3:00:00 AM6/1/97
to

This is the story of a nearly disbarred former lawyer name Betty
Phelps (married to Fred Phelps, Jr.) who does nightmarish day care in
her home. Only Phelps brats need apply otherwise the 'day care' might
get turned in as child abuse. See today's installment (Part 5) of
"Addicted to Hate" and learn about the Phelps Family Values.

To enroll in the 'patriot' day care center, call or write today to:

Fred W. Phelps. Jr. and Betty Phelps (son and daughter-in-law of Fred
Sr.)
3600 S. W. Holly Lane
Topeka, Kansas 66604
home: (913) 272-4135

Genghis Khan

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Jun 2, 1997, 3:00:00 AM6/2/97
to

On Mon, 02 Jun 1997 00:32:03 GMT, kla...@ix.netcom.com (Rev. Billy
Wade Phelps) wrote:

>On 1 Jun 1997 21:58:24 GMT, eho...@usa.net (Eric Hoffer) wrote:
>
>>This is the story of a nearly disbarred former lawyer name Betty
>>Phelps (married to Fred Phelps, Jr.) who does nightmarish day care in
>>her home. Only Phelps brats need apply otherwise the 'day care' might
>>get turned in as child abuse. See today's installment (Part 5) of
>>"Addicted to Hate" and learn about the Phelps Family Values.
>

>What kind of family values is there in having another person's penis
>shoved into your rectum of putting another person's penis into your
>mouth. You are a very foul little Son of Satan Eric and it is you not
>us given to hate. You can only make up lies about our family because
>you can't defend your own filthy hellish habits.
>Billy Wade Phelps

You must excuse Eric Hoffer, he's just a wild eyed, crazed jizm
guzzler that has no sense of cleanliness or Holiness! He cannot
understand that he is the one that is in the outfield.

dion...@infinet.com

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Jun 4, 1997, 3:00:00 AM6/4/97
to

Rev. Billy Wade Phelps (kla...@ix.netcom.com) said:

}What kind of family values is there in having another person's penis
}shoved into your rectum of putting another person's penis into your
}mouth. You are a very foul little Son of Satan Eric and it is you not
}us given to hate. You can only make up lies about our family because
}you can't defend your own filthy hellish habits.

Us? Lie? Why would we do that when the truth of your family is so much
more interesting? Behold world! The court documentation of the Phelps
family life:

[ begin 300K+ court document ]

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF SHAWNEE COUNTY, KANSAS DIVISION 7

Case No. 94CV766

JON BELL,
Plaintiff,

vs.

STAUFFER COMMUNICATIONS, INC.,
Defendant.


PETITION FOR DECLARATORY RELIEF
(Pursuant to K.S.A. Chapter 60-1701 et. seq.)

COMES NOW the Plaintiff Jon Bell and states:

1. Plaintiff is a resident of Kansas.

2. Defendant Stauffer Communications, Inc. is a corporation
organized under the laws of Kansas and may be served by serving its
resident agent The Corporation Company, Inc., 515 S. Kansas Ave., Topeka,
Kansas 66603.

3. Plaintiff was an intern and employed by Defendant to work for
its newspaper Topeka Capital Journal, in Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas.

4. As part of his work he was assigned by the managing editor to
prepare stories and/or manuscripts concerning one Fred Phelps, pastor of
Westboro Baptist Church, Inc.

5. That Plaintiff's employment was originally undertaken for
compensation of $1300 per month (37 1/2 hours per week at $8.00/hour). As
the scope of the Phelps project expanded to book length, Plaintiff
indicated his willingness to do a book for the compensation he was being
paid. It was represented to him by the managing editor, Mr. Sullivan, that
the publication of the book would have such value to Plaintiff's
reputation as an author that the publication plus the salary was just
compensation. In reliance upon the representation that the book would be
published by Defendant, he continued with the project to the point of
final manuscript and dedicated overtime hours (for which he was not
separately compensated) having a reasonable value in excess of $10,000.

6. Plaintiff has been advised by Mr. Hively, the publisher of the
Topeka Capital Journal that Defendant does not intend to publish the book
or any portion of it.

7. Plaintiff has been separately advised by the defendant's
attorney that Defendant does not grant Plaintiff permission to publish the
book (Ex. B attached).

8. Plaintiff claims that he has intellectual property rights in
the manuscript and desires to publish it and that in the absence of
compensation for his overtime or because of his reliance on Mr. Sullivan's
representation if Defendant chooses to waste the work that he has the
right to publish the book.

9. In that Defendant has asserted superior rights to the
manuscript, but, has likewise has declared an intent not to publish and
the fact that the material may become dated, or alternatively, lose its
timelessness (the subject of the manuscript is currently running for the
Democratic nomination for Governor of the State of Kansas), it is
important to resolve the rights of the parties in and to the manuscript as
it relates to the contract of employment which previously existed between
Plaintiff and Defendant, and terminate the controversy over rights to the
manuscript which gives rise to these proceedings.

10. Plaintiff feels uncertain and insecure of his legal position
in the absence of a judicial declaration of his rights, and for that
reason, brings this action.

WHEREFORE, Plaintiff prays that the Court construe the terms of his
employment and his rights to publish the manuscript marked as Ex. A and
attached hereto, and permit the Plaintiff the right without restriction,
and subject to any fair accounting to Defendant, to publish the
manuscript.


(Signature of Jon Bell)
Jon Bell, pro s=82

(Home address intentionally omitted)

Lawrence, KS 66044

(Document contains the seal of the District Court of Shawnee County,
Kansas and the signature of Leslie Miller, Deputy Clerk of the District
Court of Shawnee County, Kansas and dated 6-29-94.)

EXHIBIT B

(Letterhead of the law firm of Goodell, Stratton, Edmonds & Palmer)
515 South Kansas Avenue
Topeka, Kansas 66603-3999
913-233-0593
Telecopier: 913-233-8870)

June 2, 1994


Mr. Jon Bell
(Home Address Intentionally Omitted)
Shawnee, Kansas 66216

In re: Topeka Capital-Journal
Our file: 31143

Dear Jon:

I understand that you are in some way marketing or trying to develop
an interest in the Capital-Journal's investigatory work on Fred Phelps.

Be advised that you are not authorized to engage in this activity.
This work is the property of The Topeka Capital-Journal, and does not
belong to you. My client will make all decisions regarding the piece. You
are not authorized to speak on behalf of The Capital-Journal regarding
this work, or even to reveal its existence for that matter. If you are
taking any steps to develop a market or other interest in this work, you
are required to cease immediately.

Meanwhile, please advise Pete Goering at The Capital-Journal of any
steps you have taken in this regard.

Very truly yours,
(Signature of Michael W. Merriam)
Michael W. Merriam

MWM:ah
cc: Mr. Pete Goering

(Note: This document contains the time stamp of the Clerk of the District
Court, Shawnee County, Kansas showing the document was filed with the
Clerk at 1:05 p.m. of June 29, 1994.)


EXHIBIT A


ADDICTED TO HATE


By Jon Michael Bell
with Joe Taschler
and Steve Fry

(Note: The contents of the following document shows the time stamp of the
Clerk of the District Court, Shawnee County, Kansas and shows that the
document was filed at 1:05 p.m. on June 29, 1994.)

"And be sure your sin will find you out." (Num. 32:23)

A frequent quote of Pastor Fred Phelps

CAST OF CHARACTERS AND PHELPS FAMILY TREE

Reverend Fred Phelps: lawyer and Baptist minister;
head of the Westboro Baptist Church; 64 years
old. Disbarred.

Marge Phelps: wife of Fred; mother of his 13 children;
68 years old. WBC member.

1. Fred Phelps, Jr.: lawyer and employee at the Kansas Department of
Corrections; 40 years old. Oldest son. WBC member.

Betty Phelps (Schurle): wife of Fred, Jr.; lawyer and owner-operator
of a day-care home; 41 years old. WBC member.

2. ***Mark Phelps: businessman in Southern California; estranged from the
family cult; 39 years old. 2nd son.

Luava Phelps (Sundgren): wife of Mark; childhood sweetheart; 36
years old.

3. ***Katherine Phelps: lawyer; suspended from the bar; living on welfare;
38 years-old; oldest daughter. Not in WBC.

4. Margie Phelps: lawyer and employee of the Kansas Department of
Corrections; 37 years old; 2nd daughter. WBC member.

5. Shirley Phelps-Roper: lawyer at Phelps Chartered; 36 years old; 3rd
daughter. WBC member.

Brent Roper: husband of Shirley; lawyer and businessman in Topeka;
30 years old; WBC member.

6. ***Nate Phelps: businessman in Southern California; estranged from
family cult; 35 years old. 3rd son.

7. Jonathon Phelps: lawyer; 4th son; 34 years old; WBC member.

Paulette Phelps (Ossiander): wife of Jonathon; 33 years old; high
school graduate; WBC member.

8. Rebekah Phelps-Davis: lawyer at Phelps Chartered; 32 years old; 4th
daughter; WBC member.

Chris Davis: husband to Rebekah; 38 years old; raised from childhood
in the WBC.

9. Elizabeth Phelps: lawyer at Phelps Chartered; night house manager
staff at Sheltered Living, Inc. Topeka; 31 years old; 5th daughter; WBC
member. Former counsel for the Shawnee County Sheriff's Department.

10. Timothy Phelps: lawyer and employee of the Shawnee County Department
of Corrections; 30 years old; 5th son; WBC member.

Lee Ann Phelps (Brown): wife of Timothy; lawyer and employee of
Shawnee County Sheriff's Department; 27 years old; WBC member.

11.***Dorotha Bird (Phelps): lawyer practicing independently in Topeka;
6th daughter; not a WBC member; changed her last name to avoid family's
notoriety. 29 years old.

12. Rachel Phelps: lawyer at Phelps Chartered; YMCA fitness instructor;
28 years old; 7th daughter; WBC member.

13. Abigail Phelps: lawyer and employee at SRS-Youth and Adult Services,
Juvenile Offender Program; 25 years old; 8th daughter; WBC member.

OTHERS

Fred Wade Phelps: the Rev. Phelps' father; he lived in Meridian,
Mississippi. He was a railroad bull.

Catherine Idalette Phelps (Johnson): the Rev. Phelps' mother; she
died when he was a small child.

Martha Jean Capron (Phelps): the Rev. Phelps' only sibling; a former
missionary to Indonesia, she now lives in Pennsylvania; the brother and
sister have not spoken for years.

***Denotes a Phelps child who has left the family cult.

(Note: The next portion of Exhibit A contains some handwritten notes
denoting ages of the Phelps' children, some names of some of the
non-Phelps WBC members (George Stutzman, Charles Hockenbarger, Jennifer
Hockenbarger, and Charles Hockenbarger), names of some of the Phelps'
grandchildren (Benjamin, Sharon, Sara, Libby, Jacob, Sam, and Josh), and 2
items pasted onto the document which are published documents showing the
Phelps family tree and a map of the area surrounding Meridian,
Mississippi.)

(Preface)

He rang the doorbell. It was winter, and with his thick gloves he could
barely feel the button.

No answer.

He waited. A cat, caught like him on this cold night outside, walked along
the porch rail. Toward him.

He watched it.

In the street behind them a solitary car passed. Like urban sleigh bells,
the chains on its tires chimed rhythmic into the pounded street snow.

No one was home. The cat. Was rubbing against his leg.

He set the candy down and picked it up. It purred. And purred more when he
tucked it under his warm arm. Like a football. Against his thick coat.

He could see into its eyes. Up close. He liked it that way.

When he wrapped his thick fingers round its tiny neck...

Pinning its legs against his side, he slowly squeezed, watching the eyes
widen in alarm. Feeling it push against him. Desperately struggle. For a
long time struggle.

Watching.

The lids droop slowly down. The light pass from the eyes.

He let go. Another car rattled metal links by in the snow.

Watching the light return. The animal terror that followed. Flooding the
look in those helpless eyes. It pierced his soul.

A shock wave of remorse flamed hot. In all his cells he could feel it.

Guilt.

Or was it love. Yes, warm love for this tiny being.

But...

I want to do it. Again. Now.

Yes, I want to know what it's like once more.

He squeezed the cat's thin neck. And when it has succumbed, he felt the
same pity again warm flooding him.

And only horror at himself. As he did it once more.

And when it was over he...

But this time the cat mustered the last of its tiny animal ferocity and
writhed free.

He felt...watching it streak away...he felt jarred awake somehow...as it
ran from him...yes, he was awake now...

And terrified

Had anyone seen him? Would they know?

In a panic he ran

Home to his father's house...


CHAPTER ONE

"Introductions All Around"

A TIME magazine article from 1950 hangs framed on the wall. It's about a
college student's crusade against necking on a campus in Southern
California.

That student's office in Kansas today is aclack with fax machines and
ringing phones, but the chair behind the great mahogany desk is empty.

When the former campus evangelist finally bursts in, he is trailed by
grandchildren--so many sixth-grade secretaries--gophering, sending faxes,
fetching papers--and a glass of water for the reporter.

Thoughtful. It's 93 outside.

"Sit down," says Fred Phelps, rumored ogre, with an effusive Southern
graciousness. "But I got to tell you, you know we're going to preach the
word, the same thing I've been preaching for 46 years, and it's supremely,
supremely irrelevant to us what anybody thinks or says. "You get a little
bit of this message I'm preaching, you can't ask for anything more. God
hates fags--that's a synopsis."

Phelps, 63, a disbarred lawyer and Baptist preacher from Mississippi, is
on a mission from God. His face lights up like a kid's on Christmas
morning when he talks about how the nation is reacting to his
anti-homosexual campaign. He contends the Bible supports the death penalty
for sodomy:

"I'm not urging anybody to kill anybody," he adds, then matter-of-factly
explains how his interpretation of the Bible calls for precisely that:

"The death penalty was violently carried out by God on a massive scale
when the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire and
brimstone," says Phelps. "I am inclined to the view that the closer man's
laws come to God's laws, the better off our race will be."

Phelps has found the national spotlight by disrupting the mourners'
grieving at the funerals of AIDS victims. His followers carry picket signs
outside the services with such stone-hearted messages as GOD HATES FAGS
and FAGS=DEATH.

Last spring, he and his tiny band traveled to Washington, D.C., to taunt
the gay parade, creating a near-riot. Since then, Phelps has been the
subject of a 20-20 segment, appeared on the Jane Whitney Show twice to
mock homosexuals, and is now regularly interviewed on both Christian and
secular radio across America.

Fred Phelps, pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church in the Kansas capital
of Topeka, since 1990 has also been an unsuccessful candidate for mayor,
governor, and United States Senator. Currently he is negotiating his own
radio show--one that will be heard throughout the Midwest.

His message is simple: God hates most everybody and He's sending them all
to hell. Makes no difference how they lived their life.

For the Pastor Phelps, except for a handful of 'elect', the human race is
composed of depraved beasts. God hates these creatures and so do His
favored few. The world is divided sharply and irreversibly between the
multitude of the already-damned (called the reprobate or the Adamic Race)
and those chosen by God to attend Him in heaven. Those selected to be
elect were tapped, not for the rectitude of their lives, but by what could
best be described as the Supreme Whim of the Deity.

While this is the theology of predestination, one that in less vengeful
minds is a mainstay of many Protestant sects, in Fred Phelps' mind it has
become a green light to hatred and cruelty.

Recently, Pastor Phelps has added a corollary to this thesis that God
hates the human race: God reserves His most pure and profound hatred for
the homosexuals among the Adamic race.

At 63, Phelps is a triathlon competitor who bikes or runs every day. The
strongest thing he drinks is what he calls his 'vitamin C cocktail',
consisting of Vitamin C, Diet Pepsi, and water.

The pastor basks in the heat of the outrage triggered by his campaign
against homosexuals.

"If you're preaching the truth of God, people are going to hate you," he
grins. "Nobody has the right to think he's preaching the truth of God
unless people hate him for it. All the prophets were treated that way."

Phelps delivers this with all the drama, fire, and brimstone of a man who
used to be a trial lawyer and is still a preacher. His voice and tone are
spellbinding and chilling. He doesn't stumble over his words.

Clearly, he believes he is a modern day prophet.

Phelps says he and his family have been hated and persecuted almost from
the time they arrived in Topeka in 1954.

"The more opposition we get, the more committed we get," says Liz Phelps,
one of the pastor's daughters.

"Nothing, short of the elimination of homosexuality in the world, will
make us stop," announces the pastor.

In an unexpected reprieve from the anticipated 'sodomite' label pasted on
all who disagree--especially the press--the former vacuum cleaner salesman
gives his visitor a warm smile and immediately takes to calling him warmly
by his first name.

He leads a brief tour through his church.

It adjoins his office: a long room, with a low ceiling and a rusty red
carpet and dark, oaken pews. It has enough seating for twice the current
congregation of 51.

The reporter asks to go to the bathroom. A stocky teenage grandson with
training in judo is sent along. He waits outside, no dummy, for the
reporter to finish.

Then it's upstairs to the study, a high, spacious room filled with books
of biblical exegesis dating back to the Reformation. Fred is eager to
prove his Bible scholarship, and perhaps frustrated, even contemptuous,
when he realizes he is talking to a Bible-ho-hum humanist.

Downstairs, the pastor leads to the garage where their wardrobe of picket
signs is kept. Stacked high against the walls are messages for every
occasion--all of them gloomy.

No good news here.

Outside, one would never guess they were at a church. Westboro Baptist is
actually a large home in a comfortable Topeka neighborhood. In fact,
Phelps and his wife have lived in the house for almost 40 years, and
raised their 13 children within its walls. For many years, his law office
was also located in the residence Fred Phelps insists is still his
'church'.

The pastor's large family has always composed nearly all of his
congregation and loyal following.

As his children grew up, they bought the adjoining houses on the block,
creating a tight compound around the church. Today, one finds a citadel of
modest homes joined by fences, sharing a common backyard.

In a small revolution in urban design, the space behind their houses has
not been sub-divided, but made into a wide grass park, complete with
swimming pool, ball court, and trampoline. The grandchildren wander from
their separate houses to play together.

The effect on the nervous reprobates outside the walls is a sense of Waco
in the air.

From his compound, like a knight sallying forth from the Crusaders'
citadel of Krak, Pastor Phelps and his child band make war on the Adamic
race.

When not doing TV talk shows, radio interviews, or appearing on the cover
of the national gay magazine, The Advocate, Phelps lays siege to his
hometown, nearby Kansas City, and local universities.

The Westboro congregation pickets public officials, private businesses,
and other churches, many of whom have had only tenuous connection to some
form of anti-Phelps criticism. Until a city ordinance was passed against
it, the Westboro warriors even picketed their opponents' homes.

For the last two years, this tiny group, by virtue of their tactics,
dedication, and discipline, have held the Kansas capital hostage.

Fred Phelps has been able to intimidate most of the residents of Topeka
into a fearful silence, though he himself is a shrill and vigorous
defender of his own First Amendment rights. Those who would disagree with
his brutal remedies to his perception of social ills face a three-fold
attack:

Lawsuits: If the rest of America has justly come to fear the anonymous
lone nut with a gun, it has yet to experience a community of eccentrics
stockpiling law degrees.

Picketing: One prominent restaurant in Topeka is now failing after being
picketed daily for almost a year. "Patrons just got tired of the
harassment," sighs the owner. The cause of the pickets? One of the
restaurant's employees is a lesbian.

Faxes: Phelps has gone to court and won on his right to fax daily almost
300 public officials, private offices, and the media with damaging and
embarrassing information from the private lives of his opponents--most of
it false, wild, and unsubstantiated.

One city councilwoman was called a "Jezebelian, switch-hitting whore" who
had sex with several men at once. A police officer saw his name faxed all
over town as a child molester, one who had lured young boys to a park
outside the city and had sex with them in his patrol car.

Despite his daughter Margie's assertions that Phelps has the evidence to
prove such accusations 'big time', no such proof has ever emerged.

Over the weeks, one learns about the family. Of Fred's 13 children, nine
remain in the community. Five of them are married and raising 24
grandchildren.

All of the members of Westboro Baptist--children, in-laws, and
grandchildren--participate in the pastor's anti-gay campaign.

Despite their image from the pickets, most of the adults are friendly and
socially accomplished. Each of them has a law degree, and some have
additional postgraduate degrees in business or public administration. The
adults pay taxes, meet bills, and obey the laws. The grandchildren are
perhaps less demonstrative than most children, but in an earlier day that
was called well-behaved. Many of their parents hold or have held important
jobs in local and state agencies.

The pastor's first-born, Fred, Jr., and his wife, Betty, were guests at
the Clinton inauguration. The former northeast Kansas campaign manager for
Al Gore in 1988 has a stack of VIP photos, such as the one of him, Betty,
Al and Tipper, and even soon-to-be Kansas governor Joan Finney smiling and
yucking it up at the Phelps' place just a few years ago.

Clearly these are not streetcorner flakes taken to carrying signs.

The only discordant note here is the Pastor Phelps, pacing about in his
lycra shorts and windbreaker, looking like a triathlon competitor who made
a wrong turn, ended in a bad neighborhood, and had his bike stolen. But he
can easily be discounted while listening to his wife reveal just exactly
how she managed to raise those thirteen kids.

How?

Well, for starters, the woman born Margie Simms of Carrollton, Missouri,
had nine brothers and sisters herself. Her own tribe she raised by the
same five rules she grew up under: keep their faces clean, their hands
clean, and their clothes clean; keep the house clean and keep 'em fed. No
Game Boys, college funds, and cars on sixteenth birthdays.

She did most of the cooking at first, and her grocery bill, she estimates,
would be over two thousand a month today. Many of the 24 grandchildren
still spend time at Gramp's house, she said, and their food costs are over
a thousand a month, even now.

Mrs. Phelps smiles. Before the kids got old enough to be finicky, she
could fill one tub and bathe them all, then line them up to brush their
teeth and clean their fingernails. They had six bedrooms furnished with
bunkbeds, and everyone wore hand-me-downs. Her laundry pile was so huge,
she needed two washers and two dryers:

"I'm afraid that Maytag repairman wasn't lonely with us. He was always out
at our house. We went through washers and dryers every three years. They
worked all day long.

"The part I dreaded most about raising so many children? When they were
sick. Then you had to pay all your attention to that one--and hope the
others would make out all right."

Later, she adds, the older kids took over most of the chores and her job
became considerably easier.

The children used to listen to their father preach twice on Sunday, says
daughter Margie. Once at eleven and again at seven that evening. "But
there's too many conflicting schedules now. So we only have the one sermon
at eleven-thirty,"

Margie tells how their household was abuzz with political bull sessions.
All the candidates and wannabes came through there:

"My dad was complete activity and whirlwind. My mom was the calm at the
center of the storm. She's the one who inspired our closeness. Getting us
to look out for our brothers and sisters; bond with each other."

Mrs. Phelps describes how everyone had to take piano lessons. They had two
pianos in the garage and three in the house. (Chopsticks in fugue-five as
a backdrop to any childhood might explain why the adults seem so tense
today.)

Margie tells of their family choir. How they practiced a cappella and
harmony. Even today, their counter-protestors grudgingly admit the Phelps
sound good when they raise their collective voice in hymn from across the
street.

Once for their father's birthday, says Margie, the children learned to
harmonize "One Tin Soldier", the theme song from the film, "Billy Jack".

She laughs at the memory. "He was of two minds about that: flattered that
we'd done it. And not too pleased by the lyrics. ("...go ahead and hate
your neighbor...go ahead and cheat a friend...do it in the name of
heaven...you'll be justified in the end...")

"We had good times...lots of good times," says Mrs. Phelps. "I would not
have had any other childhood but that one," adds her daughter.

If they're not holding harassing signs saying, 'God Hates Fags', calling
deaf old dowagers 'sodomite whores', or bristling at startled churchgoers,
Fred's kids are back at home being model parents and neighbors, attending
PTOs and Clinton coronations.

The stark contrast of the two masks--decent and repulsive, hateful and
considerate, forthright and devious, stupid and clever--creates a polarity
that begins to weigh on the observer. Contrasts frequently are the visible
edge of contradiction. And contradictions sometimes arise from very deep
and secret undercurrents. Currents of pain.

One day in the pickup with the pastor and his wife, driving the signs to
the picket line, Fred suddenly jams on the brakes and pulls over.

"Why'd you do that?" asks the mother of 13.

"We're gonna make sure those kids are safe," the pastor replies.

The objects of his concern are in the yard across the street. There is
absolutely no chance he could have hit them. It's odd and unnecessary and
exaggerated behavior.

His wife knows it; even the children know it--they've pulled back and are
watching the truck suspiciously.

Mrs. Phelps gives her husband a strange look. As if she had some secret
knowledge.

It's obvious Fred intended this as an awkward display of altruism for the
press. The message is: "The pastor loves kids".

But the message one gets is a warning from Hamlet: "The play's the thing
wherein we'll catch the conscience of the king."

Because that boy, now a man, ran home to his father's house. The house of
Fred Phelps.

Where all good things end.

Where any family counselor will assert that a child who strangles pets has
almost certainly been brutalized as well.

CHAPTER TWO

"Daddy's Hands"

Mark Phelps feels nauseated whenever he remembers that night. He was hit
over 60 times and his brother, Nate, over 200 with a mattock handle.

Nate went into shock. Mark didn't. A boy who became a compulsive counter
to handle the stress, Mark counted every stroke. His and Nate's. While
their father screamed obscenities and his brother screamed in pain.

Every 20 strokes, their mother wiped their faces off in the tub. Nate
passed out anyway. That was Christmas Day.

Though he believes he should be the next governor of Kansas, Pastor Phelps
has never believed in Christmas.

A mattock is a pick-hoe using a wooden handle heavier than a bat. Fred
swung it with both hands like a ballplayer and with all his might.

"The first blow stunned your whole body," says Mark. "By the third blow,
your backside was so tender, even the lightest strike was agonizing, but
he'd still hit you like he wanted to put it over the fence. By 20, though,
you'd have grown numb with pain. That was when my father would quit and
start on my brother. Later, when the feeling had returned and it hurt
worse than before, he'd do it again.

"After 40 strokes, I was weak and nauseous and very pale. My body hurt
terribly. Then it was Nate's turn. He got 40 each time.

"I staggered to the bathtub where my mom was wetting a towel to swab my
face. Behind me, I could hear the mattock and my brother was choking and
moaning. He was crying and he wouldn't stop."

The voice in the phone halts. After an awkward moment, clearing of
throats, it continues:

"Then I heard my father shouting my name. My mom was right there, but she
wouldn't help me. It hurt so badly during the third beating that I kept
wanting to drop so he would hit me in the head. I was hoping I'd be
knocked out, or killed...anything to end the pain.

"After that...it was waiting that was terrible. You didn't know if, when
he was done with Nate, he'd hurt you again. I was shaking in a cold panic.
Twenty-five years since it happened, and the same sick feeling in my
stomach comes back now..."

Did he? Come back to you?

"No. He just kept beating Nate. It went on and on and on. I remember the
sharp sound of the blows and how finally my brother stopped screaming...

"It was very quiet. All I could think of was would he do that to me now. I
could see my brother lying there in shock, and I knew in a moment it would
be my turn.

"I can't describe the basic animal fear you have in your gut at a time
like that. Where someone has complete power over you. And they're hurting
you. And there is no escape. No way out. If your mom couldn't help you...I
can't explain it to anyone except perhaps a survivor from a POW camp."

Last year, Nate Phelps, sixth of Pastor Phelps' 13 children, accused his
father of child abuse in the national media. The information was presented
as a footnote to the larger story of Fred Phelps' anti-gay campaign.

But the deep currents that lie beneath the apparent apple-cheeks of the
Phelps' clan were stirring. A series of interviews with Nate resulted in
an eyewitness account of life growing up in the Phelps camp.

These reports contained allegations of persistent and poisonous child
abuse, wife-beating, drug addiction, kidnapping, terrorism, wholesale tax
fraud, and business fraud. In addition, Nate described the cult-like
disassembly of young adult identities into shadow-souls, using physical
and emotional coercion--coercion which may have been a leading factor in
the suicide of an emotionally troubled teenage girl.

The second son, Mark Phelps, who according to his sisters was at one time
heir to the throne of Fred, had refused comment during the earlier spate
of news coverage. He and Nate have both left the Westboro congregation and
now live within four blocks of each other on the West Coast.

But, like the icy water that waits off sunny California beaches, the
deepest currents sometimes rise and now Mark has surfaced with a
decision.

"My father," says the 39 year-old, now a parent himself, "is addicted to
hate. Why? I can't say. But I know he has to let it out. As rage. In doing
so, he has violated the sacred trust of a parent and a pastor.

"I'm not trying to hurt my father. And I'm not trying to save him. I'm
going to tell what happened because I've decided it's the only way I can
overcome my past: to drag it into the light and break its chains."

Mark believes that Fred Phelps, no longer able to hate and abuse his adult
children if he hopes to keep them near, by necessity now must turn all his
protean anger outward against his community. Mark has decided to tell the
truth about his father so that others will be warned.

He and his brother have now come forward with specific and detailed
stories, alarming tales, ones that could be checked and have been
verified. Mark's testimony supports Nate's previously, and both men's
statements have been confirmed by a third Phelps' child. In addition, the
Capital-Journal has uncovered documents which substantiate this testimony,
and interviewed dozens of relevant witnesses who have confirmed much of
this information.

"One of my earliest memories...," the voice in the phone pauses, painful
to remember: "was the big ol' German shepherd that belonged to our
neighbors. One day it was in our yard and my father went out and blew it
apart with his shotgun."

Mark says he has no memories prior to age five.

"Living in that house was like being in a war zone, where things were
unpredictable and things were very violent. And there was a person who was
violent who did what he wanted to do. And that was to hurt people, or
break things, or throw a fit, or whatever he wanted to do, that's what he
did. And there was nobody there to say different."

One day when Mark was a teenager, he came home to find his mom sitting on
the lip of the tub, blue towel on her head, her lips pursed with anger and
hurt.

"Do you know what your father did today?" she asked.

To Mark, it felt surreal. His mother never spoke out nor vented her
emotions. She seemed quite different just then.

He looked at his father. Pastor Phelps was standing across the room with
his arms folded, smiling (the bathtub was in the parents' bedroom).

"No," said Mark. "I don't know."

His mother stood up and whipped the towel down her side. "He chopped my
hair off," she announced, tears coming to her eyes.

The son stood aghast at the grotesque head before him. His mother's former
waist-length hair had been shorn to two inches--and even that showed
ragged gouges down to the white of the scalp. "Why?" he asked.

"Your father says I wasn't in subjection today," she replied.

According to Mark and Nate, all of the Phelps children were terrified of
their father:

"Usually we had to worry what mood we'd find him in after school. You
didn't make any noise or racket, or cut-up; you had to walk on eggshells,
tiptoe around him; you didn't fight with your siblings; you did your jobs,
performed your assigned tasks, and hoped not to draw his attention."

If you did draw it and he was in a foul mood, say the boys, summary
punishment at the hands of the dour pastor involved being beaten with
fists, kicked in the stomach, or having one's arm twisted up and behind
one's back till it nearly dislocated.

Sometimes Pastor Phelps preferred to grab one child by their little hands
and haul them into the air. Then he would repeatedly smash his knee into
their groin and stomach while walking across the room and laughing.

The boys remember this happening to Nate when he was only seven, and to
Margie and Kathy even after they were sexually developed teenagers.

Nate recalls being taken into the church once where his father, a former
golden gloves boxer, bent him backwards over a pew, body-punched him, spit
in his face, and told him he hated him.

Mark's very first memory in this life is an emotional scar: their mom had
gone to the hospital to give birth to Jonathon. Mark remembers being very
upset, since now they would be alone in the house with their father, his
threatening presence left unmitigated by her maternal concern.

Though only five, already Mark could use the phone and, one day while his
father was out he dialed the number she'd left.

When he heard her voice, he told her, "Mom, I'm scared. I need you." But
before she could respond, the Pastor Phelps came on. He had gone to visit
the new mother.

"What the hell are you doing calling here?" the father shouted into the
phone. "Don't you ever call here and bother her again!"

That is Mark Phelps' earliest memory. That, and the feeling, when his
father hung up, that there would be no rescue and no escape from the fear
and pain contained in the word, 'daddy'.

When Fred Phelps came home, he beat the little boy's first memory of the
world in to stay. From that moment, Mark whispers softly in the phone, "I
resolved to be a total yes-man to my father. If I couldn't escape his
violence, then I'd get so close to him he wouldn't see me. I'd survive
that way."

"We had clothes and food," adds Nate. "What we didn't have was safety. He
could throw fits and rages at any moment. When he did, the kids would
respond by turning pale and shaking, standing there shivering and
listening--Mark would pace and count the squares in the floor."

"But I learned exactly what I had to do...to stay safe around him,"
continues Mark. I did a good job of it."

He admits he used to beat his brothers and sisters if his father ordered
him: "If you fell asleep in church, you got hit in the face. Once I hit
Nate so hard, it knocked over the pew and blood splurt across the floor."

After a moment, he tells us quietly: "My brothers and sisters are entitled
to hate me."

Physical abuse? Nonsense, say sisters Margie and Shirley. They laugh.
Well, maybe during their father's period of preoccupation with health
food. Every morning they were required to eat nuts and vitamins, curds and
whey.

"I hate nuts," says Margie "We'd take the vitamins and drop them in our
pockets. Throw them out later." She adds: "Little Abby was the only one
who liked curds and whey. Poor kid. She'd have to eat every bowl on the
table when my dad wasn't looking."

Against this charming story is set another.

For all her reputation as a minotaur of the Kansas courtrooms, Margie
Phelps was like a second mom to the younger children. Today, she remains
well-liked by her siblings, including Mark and Nate.

When her father was beating someone and screaming at the top of his lungs,
frequently Margie would take her terrified younger brothers and sisters
away for several hours. When they thought it was over, they'd come back
like cautious house cats, sneaking in softly, Margie on point, to see if
the coast was clear.

The boys tell how one day their father was in a barbershop and noticed the
leather strap used to sharpen razors. It struck his fancy as a backup to
the mattock handle, so he had one custom-made at a leatherworker's shop
near Lane and Huntoon.

"It was about two feet long and four inches wide. It left oval
circles--red, yellow, and blue," says Mark. "Usually the circles would be
where it would snap the tip--on the outside of your right leg and
hip...because he was righthanded."

According to Mark and Nate, their father wore out several of the
leathermaker's straps while they were growing up.

As Mark Phelps became the angel-appointed in Fred's family cult, Nate was
assigned the role of sinner. For Mark, his brother was the needed
scapegoat. For the rest of the family, Nate was a problem child, the
delinquent of the brood.

Brilliant like his dad (Nate's IQ has been measured at 150), the middle
son followed another drummer from the time he was a toddler. When he was
five, he remembers his father telling him, 'I'm going to keep a special
eye on you'. The regular beatings started shortly thereafter.

Nate endured literally hundreds of such brutalities before walking out at
one minute after midnight on his eighteenth birthday.

His siblings both inside and outside the church agree that Nate got the
lion's share of the 'discipline'.

"Nate was a very tough kid," says Mark. "I don't know how he endured it,
but he did. He'd get 40 blows at a time from the mattock handle. He was
just tougher than the rest of us and my father adjusted for that."

Today, raising his family in California, Nate is a devout Christian and a
warm, friendly, considerate, mountain of a man. But at 6'4" and 280
pounds, it would be...instructive...to see father and son in the same room
today with one mattock stick between them.

"I sensed early on this man had no love for us," says Nate. "He was using
us. I knew it. And I always made sure he knew I did."

In fact, Mark adds, Nate's obstinate resistance so angered his father
that, by age nine, when a family outing had been planned, frequently Nate
not only missed it, but Fred would remain behind with him. "And during the
course of the day, my father would beat Nate whenever the spirit moved
him."

Mark remembers the family coming back once to find Pastor Phelps jogging
around the dining room table, beating the sobbing boy with a broom handle;
while doing so, he was alternately spitting on the frightened child and
chuckling the same sinecure laugh so disturbing to those who've seen him
on television.

When he wasn't allowed to go along, says Mark, "Nate would literally
scream and chase mom as she drove off with us kids in the car. He knew
what was coming after we left."

The older brother remembers the little one racing alongside the windows,
begging for them not to leave him until, like a dog, he could no longer
keep up.

Mark sorrowfully admits he felt no empathy for him, only relief it wasn't
happening to himself. "I just stared straight ahead. I didn't know what he
was yelling about. I was just glad to get the hell out of there."

But how could their mom tolerate that? Wouldn't the maternal instinct cut
in at some point? Wouldn't the lioness turn in fury to protect her cub?

It turns out Mrs. Phelps was herself an abused child, according to her
sons.

"The only thing she ever told us about her dad was that he was a drunkard
who beat them. She said she'd always run and hide in the watermelon patch
when he was raging."

Though most of her nine brothers and sisters either settled in Kansas City
or remained in rural Missouri, Mrs. Phelps has had virtually no contact
with them during the last 40 years. Not since she married Fred.

"My father was very effective at jamming Bible verses down her throat
about wives being in subjection to their husbands," Nate says. "She was a
small woman and very gentle. She felt God had put her with Fred and she
had to endure."

"Oh, mom would try to interfere," adds Mark. "She'd come running out,
finally, into the church auditorium as the beating would escalate, and
yell wildly, 'Fred, stop it!" You're going to kill him!'

"And then my father would turn on her. I remember him screaming, 'Oh, so
you want me to just let them go, huh? You don't believe in discipline,
huh? Why don't you just shut your goddam mouth before I slap you? Get your
fat hussy ass out of here! I'm warning you, goddamit, you either shut up
or I'm going to beat you!'

"And then," Mark continues, "she'd shut up till she couldn't take it
anymore, then she'd start again. When she did, he'd start beating her and
hitting her with his fist, and sometimes she'd just come up and grab him.
Sometimes she'd run out the front door, and sometimes he'd just slap her
and beat her until she'd shut up.

"I can remember times when she'd get hit so hard, it looked like she'd be
knocked out, and she'd stagger and almost fall. She would give out this
desperate scream right at the moment when he would hit her.

"Sometimes, after he'd get done beating her, he'd have forgotten about the
kid. Sometimes he'd go back to the kids and beat even harder. Then he'd
blame the kid for what had happened."

The phone line falls silent.

"Out in public," recalls Nate, "she wore sunglasses a lot."

Mrs. Phelps was beaten even when she wasn't interfering. After Nate and
Kathy, the boys figure their mom was victimized the most.

They remember their father finishing one session by throwing her down the
stairs from the second floor.

"It had 16 steps," says Mark.

"And no rail," continues Nate. "Mom grabbed at the stairs going over and
tore the ligaments and cartilage in her right shoulder. The doctor said
she needed surgery, but my father refused. We had no medical insurance
back then. She's had a bad shoulder ever since. My father often chose that
same shoulder to re-injure when he was beating mom. He'd grab her right
arm and jerk it. She'd yelp."

The voice in the phone sighs: "But...I guess I do still feel that very
deeply...that she betrayed a gut, primitive bond when she drove off and
left me. I do love my mom. But I wish she'd put a stop to it. She could
have and she didn't."

Pastor Phelps denies beating his children or his wife. "Hardly a word of
truth to that stuff. You know, it's amazing to me that even one of them
stayed." He grins, referring to the nine daughters and sons who remain
loyal to him.

Why?

"Because teachers have the kids from age five. And children are besieged
by their own lusts and foreign ideas.

"Those boys (Mark and Nate) didn't want to stay in this church. It was too
hard. They took up with girls they liked, and the last thing them girls
was gonna do was come into this church.

"Those boys wanted to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. I can't
blame them. I just feel sorry for them that they're not bound for the
promised land."

Margie is the second-oldest daughter and the fourth Phelps child. Her mom
goes by 'Marge", so she is 'Margie'. Some say Margie is the de facto head
of operations for her father's war on the community. Anticipating bad
reviews from Nate, at least, she explained:

"My brother is furious with his father because he (Nate) is married to
another man's wife. My dad and our whole family do not accept that."

On the abuse issue, her denials take a softer tone: "There were times in
our childhood when each of us had bruises on our behinds. My dad had a
capacity to go too far. In what he said even more than what he did...yet,
as obnoxious as he can be one minute, he's the most kind, caring person
another minute.

"I have a marvellous relationship with my father as an adult. He respects
me. He listens to me. And he helps me. Most people, when they get older,
they don't have that kind of relationship with their parents."

Margie, as a single woman, adopted a new-born infant boy nine years ago.
"Jacob doesn't have a father," she says, "and my dad fills in there. He's
one of Jacob's best friends. He's just a wonderful grandfather to him."

For his part, Nate remembers Marge bringing home bad grades one day and
going running to avoid a beating. When she got back, she was in an
exhausted state. Fred beat her anyway. So badly, she lost consciousness
and lay in a heap on the floor.

The Pastor Phelps kicked his daughter repeatedly in the head and stomach
while she out.

"I saw her interviewed on television," adds Nate. "And she said we weren't
abused, just strictly brought up."

He was concerned when he heard her say that: "If she remembers that as a
'strict upbringing', then there's no moral suasion there for her not to
'strictly bring up' her own child, the adopted Jacob.

"Nate would have ended in the penitentiary without his father's
discipline," says his mother. "I believe it's him who's the bitter one. He
needed a lot of discipline."

That's fair. All large families have a black sheep. But this one has four:

Nate and Mark rebelled, accepting they'd be turned back from the gates of
heaven by their father who was acting as St. Peter's proxy. They later
received an official letter from the Westboro Baptist Church, informing
them they had been 'voted out of the church and delivered to Satan for the
destruction of the flesh'.

Katherine and Dottie suffered the same fate but continue to reside in
Topeka.

"Dottie only cares about her career," says her mom. "Family is an
embarrassment."

And Kathy?

"She's been a bitch since high school," says Margie.

"Mark," reflects Mrs. Phelps, "was always well-behaved. Of the ones who
left, he was a surprise."

According to Mark and Nate, fathering to Pastor Phelps meant the rod and
the pulpit. "My dad never once stood with me, or sat with me, or worked
with me to teach me anything about the practical life of a Christian,"
says Mark. "It was just preach on Sunday. There was no focus on the human
heart or being a human--you know, how we were supposed to do that."

When it came to their formal education as well, Fred's input to the
curriculum was limited to the rod and the wrath of God.

"Our dad had no use for education. He wanted us all to be lawyers, and for
that we needed good grades. But he would sneer at our subjects, never
helped us with our homework, never went to any school meetings and skipped
our graduations. All he cared about were the grades. On the day they
arrived, that was the one day he got involved in our education--usually
with the mattock."

"The only time he met our teachers," adds Nate, "was when he was suing
them."

Mark remembers a day when the boys had gathered in one room to do their
homework. They'd been working quietly for some time when the dour pastor
walked in.

After staring in simmering malevolence at each of them, he intoned: "You
guys think you may be foolin' me. But on a cold snowy day, the snow will
be crunchin' under the mailman's tires, and under his boots, when he puts
that letter in our box. Your grades. And that's when the meat's gonna get
separated from the coconut..."

When the report cards arrived from Landon Middle School one day in
January, 1972, it wasn't snowing. But Jonathon and Nate's grades were poor
and the meat got separated from the coconut.

The beatings were so severe, the boys were covered with massive, broken,
purple bruising extending from their buttocks to below their knees.
Neither Jonathon or Nate were able to sit down, and the blows to the backs
of their legs had caused so much swelling they were unable to bend them.

Today, Nate has chronic knee complaints whose origin may lie in early
trauma to the cartilage.

And after the beatings came the shaming.

It was 1972--the age of shoulder locks. Both boys had begged their father
not to have crewcuts. They already felt exposed to enough ridicule as the
odd ducks whose father didn't believe in Christmas, whose home no one was
allowed to visit, and who were forbidden to visit others' homes. Jonathon
and Nate had a teenage dread of braving the corridors with flesh-heads in
an era of long manes, and their father had relented. Their hair had been
allowed to touch their collars.

But when the grades turned bad, out came the clippers.

No attachments. Brutally short. Shaved bald.

"It was not a haircut," says Nate. "It was a penalty. And a further way of
cutting us off from the outside world."

On the following day--a Thursday--the boys came to school wearing red
stocking caps. When asked to remove them in class, they declined. This
upset their teachers almost as much as their refusal to take their seats.

One instructor demanded Nate remove his headgear. Finally, Nate did. The
teacher stared at his bald head. So did his classmates. "On second
thought," said the charitable man, "put it back on."

For gym class that Friday, the boys had a note from their mom excusing
them all week.

By now, the faculty had a pretty good idea what the clothes, notes, and
funny hats were covering, and Principal Dittemore asked Jonathon to come
into his office. Waiting for him were the school nurse and a doctor from
the community.

They asked the 13 year-old to show them his bruises. He refused.

Feeling their hands were tied, the staff released Jonathon, only to have
the pastor himself show up a few hours later. During a stormy second
meeting, Phelps accused the school, first of slackness and poor
discipline, then, paradoxically, of beating his sons and causing the
bruising themselves. He threatened to slap a lawsuit on anyone who pursued
the matter.

Not a man to be intimidated, Dittemore reported the suspected child abuse
to an officer of the Juvenile Court.

On Monday, the same routine occurred--unable to sit down and insisting on
the stocking caps. Until it came time for gym once more.

The note had excused them for a week, but now the coach demanded they show
it again, saying he'd thought it was only for a day. The boys had left
their note at home.

The coach took Nate into the locker room and stood there, waiting for him
to get undressed. Nate refused.

At that point, the faculty relented, and Jonathon and Nate thought they
were off the hook.

But, as they walked out of Landon to their mom's station wagon after
school, they saw two police cars waiting. One of the teachers pointed the
boys out to the officers. Before he knew it, Nate was in a squad car on
his way downtown.

"I was terrified. Not because I was afraid of the police. I was afraid of
my dad. I kept thinking it was all over but the funeral. What would my old
man do? This was my fault and he was going to beat the daylight out of me
and I could still barely walk from the last one."

At the station, Nate remembers everyone was very kind to him. They spent
an enormous amount of time and energy trying to allay his fears and coax
him to allow them to photograph his naked backside. Finally he did.

When the police allowed Mrs. Phelps to take her boys home, Nate's worst
nightmare came true.

After nearly getting arrested for delivering a tirade of obscenities and
threats to the juvenile detectives, the dour pastor rushed back to the
house and delivered a fresh beating to his exhausted sons.

For the moment, however, it had gone beyond the pastor's control.

Police detectives investigated the matter, and it was filed as juvenile
abuse cases #13119 and #13120. Jonathon and Nate were assigned a
court-appointed lawyer, as a guardian-ad-litem, to protect their
interests. The assistant county attorney took charge of the cases, and
juvenile officers were assigned to the boys.

In his motion to dismiss, the ever-resourceful Phelps filed a pontifically
sobering sermon on the value of strict discipline and corporal punishment
in a good Christian upbringing.

"When he beat us, he told us if it became a legal case, we'd pay hell,"
says Nate. "And we believed him. At that time, there was nothing we wanted
to see more than those charges dropped. When the guardian ad litem came to
interview us, we lied through our teeth."

Principals involved in the case speculate the boys' statements, along with
superiors' reluctance to tangle with the litigious pastor, caused the
charges to be dropped.

The last reason is not academic speculation. The Capital-Journal has
learned through several sources that the Topeka Police Department's
attitude toward the Phelps' family in the '70s and '80s was hands
off--this guy's more trouble than it's worth'.

Three months later, the case was dismissed upon the motion of the state.
The reason given by the prosecutor was "no case sufficient to go to trial
in opinion of state".

The boys were selling candy in Highland Park when they learned from their
mom during a rest break the Pastor Phelps would not go on trial for
beating his children. "I felt elated," remembers Nate. "It meant at least
I wouldn't get beaten for that."

But if Nate's life was so full of pain and fear, why didn't he speak up
when he was at the police station and everyone was being so nice to him?

Nate laughs. It's the veteran's tolerant amusement at the novice's
question. "We'll do anything not to have to give up our parents," he
answers. "That's just the way kids are. That's the way we were."

"Besides, when it (abuse) occurs since birth, it never even crosses your
mind to fight back," interrupts Mark. "You know how they train elephants?
They raise them tied to a chain in the ground. Later, it's replaced by a
rope and a stick. But the elephant never stops thinking it's a chain."

The loyal Phelps family are of two minds on the case.

Margie admitted it had occurred. Jonathon denied it. The pastor never
decided. Instead, he launched into a lecture on the value of tough love in
raising good Christians.

Since their juvenile files were destroyed when the boys reached eighteen,
but for their father's vindictiveness, there might have been no record of
this case. As it was, he sued the school.

This caused the school's insurance company to request a statement from
Principal Dittemore, who complied, describing the events which led to the
faculty's concern the boys were being abused.

The suit was dropped.

When contacted in retirement, Dittemore confirmed he'd written the letter
and acknowledged its contents.

The family now accuses Nate of fabricating his stories of child abuse.
They claim he is spinning these lies out of the malice he has over their
opposition to his marriage (Nate's wife is divorced).

But Nate was married in 1986. The described case of abuse was a matter of
record 14 years earlier--and 21 years prior to Pastor Phelps'
controversial debut on national television.

The Phelps family has since maintained that, while the case did exist, the
charges were invented by the school to harass their family. They say they
were raised under loving but strict discipline, and that is how they're
raising their children.

Jonathon Phelps, who admits he beats his wife and four children, for
emphasis reads from Proverbs, 13:24:

"He that spareth his rod, hateth his son. But he that loveth him,
chasteneth him betimes."

Yes...but...where does it say the purple child is a child much-loved?

Betty Phelps, wife of Fred, Jr., glowers at the questions. Anytime you
spank a child, you're going to cause bruising, she explains. And sneers:
"I'll bet your parents put a pillow in your pants."

Jonathon, staring straight ahead and not looking at the reporter, states
in a barely controlled voice of malevolent threat that, should the
reporter tell it differently than just heard, said scribbler is evil and
going to hell.

Assuming there'll be space, the doomed dromedary of capital muckraking
must tell it differently.

To begin with, the reporters on this story were raised in the same era and
locale as the Phelps boys. They also grew up under strict discipline, and
one of their fathers was, at one time, a professional boxer.

Daddy's hands sometimes swung a mean leather belt, but only a few strokes,
and it left no bruises. After a few minutes, one could sit down again.

The moving force behind the pastor's hands was not 'tough love', as he so
often claims, but malice aforethought.

The Capital-Journal has established from numerous sources conversant with
the case that the injuries to Nate and Jonathon Phelps in January of 1972
went far beyond the bounds of a 'strict upbringing'--even by the standards
of the strictest disciplinarian.

Those injuries would have been seen as torture and abuse in any era, at
any age, in any culture.

Mark's front porch tale is instructive. Any psychologist hearing the story
about choking that cat today would know immediately to investigate the
child's home life for abuse. Back then it was not the case.

That child would have been left to find his own way out of the terrible
subterranean world another had made for him.

Most don't. Research shows nine out of twelve die down there.

In their heart. When the light in their soul goes out. If their bodies
live on, they grow up mangled and mangle those closest to them.

And it all takes shape down there. In the dark new universe of a young
child's mind.

Mark Phelps escaped.

His father did not.

That man came to the Kansas capital instead. And, after 40 years, he still
haunts its porches, tormenting its innocents.

The Capital-Journal went south...Mississippi...to see if it could learn
where and when...perhaps how...the light went out for Fred Phelps.

It followed him to Colorado and California, Canada and New Mexico. For
three months, it turned every stone in Topeka, seeking the truth about
this man.

What follows is the monster behind the clown, the streetcorner malevolence
mocking the cameras.

CHAPTER THREE

"God's Left Hook"

The air hangs heavy, torpid, and hot. Pulling the warm steam into one's
lungs leaves only a disturbing sense of slow suffocation. Under the harsh
subtropic sun, the magnolia blossoms slip from the black-green leaves,
falling like wet snow-petals to perfume the red-clay earth. In the heat,
it leaves a heavy, hanging smell...the wealth of Dixie.

Fred Phelps spent his first years here.

Outside the courthouse, flags sag limp and breezeless. Above the doors are
cut the words:

Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbor

It's Meridian, Mississippi, town of old store fronts, mouthwatering
cornbread, and 40,000 people. Surrounded by 100-foot pine forests, its
business is lumber. Trucks and flatbed railcars loaded with freshly cut
logs rolls slowly by. To the sensual fragrance of the magnolias is added
the sweet aroma of pine. While great pyramids of logs await processing
into lumber at the plant on the west side, Navy jets roar overhead...the
other source of revenue. The federal government threatens to close the
base down; the locals fight to keep it.

Meridian was sacked by General Sheridan during the Civil War. The
implacable bluecoat burned the town and tore up what, till then, had been
a rail hub of the South.

The town has since recovered. The railroad did not.

In the cemeteries can be found gravestones of the Confederate dead. Among
them, a more recent marker reads:

Catherine Idalette Phelps Age 28

Fred's mother used to open all the windows in the house and play the
piano, according to Thetis Grace Hudson, former librarian in Meridian and
a neighbor of the Phelps family during the Depression. The other
households on her street were too poor to afford any entertainment, she
says, so everyone remembered Catherine Phelps for her kindness.

Apparently she played well.

Whenever she was at their house, Hudson remembers she used to ask Mrs.
Phelps to play the hymn "Love Lifted Me" on the piano. Fred's mother
always obliged, even if she was busy.

But, after an illness of several months--those who still remember the
family say it was throat cancer--Catherine Phelps died on September 3,
1935.

Fred was only five years old.

Since the little boy's uncle was the mayor of nearby Pascagoula, and his
father was prominent in Meridian, the honorary pallbearers at her funeral
included the local mayor, a city councilman, two judges, and every member
of the police department.

Ms. Hudson says young Fred was bewildered at the loss. After his mother's
death, a maternal great aunt, Irene Jordan, helped care for Fred and his
younger sister, Martha Jean.

"She kept house for the daddy," adds a distant relative who declined to be
identified. At times, work caused the boy's father to be away from home
and Jordan raised the children.

The woman Fred Phelps has referred to as 'his dear old aunt' died in a
head-on collision in 1951 as she was driving back to Meridian from a
nearby town.

The boy had lost two mothers before he'd turned 21.

Family friends remember Fred's father was a tall, stately man. A true
Southern gentlemen, they say. And a fine Christian.

But the elder Phelps also had a hot temper, according to Jack Webb, 81, of
Porterville, Miss. Webb owns a general store, the only business in
Porterville, a town of about 45 elderly people.

"If he got mad, he was mad all over," said Webb. He was ready to fight
right quick. He was mad, mad, mad."

Webb is a frail man, slightly hard of hearing. Walking into his general
store is like stepping back into the 19th century. The shelves, all
located behind a 100-foot wooden counter, are stocked with weary tins of
Vienna sausage and dusty bottles of aspirin. Coke goes for 30 cents.
Glass. No twist-off.

Despite the temper, Webb adds, the elder Phelps was an honorable man. In
Meridian, he had been an object of great respect.

Fred's father was a veteran of World War One, and throughout his life
suffered from the effects of a mustard gassing he'd taken in France. He
found work as a detective for the Southern Railroad to support his family.
The railroad security force or "bulls", as they were called, had a
reputation for brutality when they patrolled the yards to prevent the
itinerant laborers, washed out of their hometowns by the Depression, from
riding the freights.

"My father," says Pastor Phelps, "oft-times came home with blood all over
him."

Suddenly he stands up, turning his face away, and exits. Several minutes
later he returns, smiling, apologizing:

"You got me thinking about those days," he offers, then bravely charges
into a round of the town's official song:

"Meridian, Meridian... a city set upon a hill; Meridian, Meridian... that
radiates the South's good will."

The elder Phelps was a "bull" throughout the Depression, says Thetis
Hudson, and the pay was good. The family lived comfortably at a time when
the other families in town were being ravaged by hardship.

What was the son like?

"Fred Phelps had as normal and beautiful a home life as anyone ever
wanted," commented a relative who didn't want their name used.

"His childhood was very good," says Hudson. "There was nothing in his
family out of the ordinary."

"All I know is it's a tragedy, and it stems from within Fred Phelps," adds
the anonymous relative, referring to the homosexual picketing. "It has
nothing to do with his upbringing."

As a teenager. Fred was tall and thin and sported a crewcut. He was
extraordinarily smart, but thought to be a bit overbearing about it at
times. A reserved and serious high school student, he never dated anyone
while there.

"He was not a real socializer, but he knew a lot of people. Everyone had
the greatest respect for him," says Joe Clay Hamilton, former high-school
classmate, now a Meridian lawyer.

The future Pastor Phelps earned the rank of Eagle Scout with Palms, played
coronet and base horn in the high school band, was a high hurdler on the
track team, and worked as a reporter on the school's newspaper. In a class
of 213 graduates, he ranked sixth. When he was voted class orator for
commencement of May, 1946, received the American Legion Award for courage,
leadership, scholarship, and service, then honored as his congressman's
choice for West Point, Fred Phelps was only 16 years old.

A year later this young man, touted as the quiet achiever, had turned his
back on West Point, his former life, and his future promise. The summer of
'47 would find him a belligerent and eccentric zealot, antagonizing the
Mormons in the mountains of Utah.

Because of his age, Phelps had to wait one fateful year before entering
the military academy. During that time he attended the local junior
college. While waiting for his life to start, Fred, along with his best
friend, John Capron, went to a revival meeting at the local Methodist
church.

It was there the budding pastor felt the 'call', and the dreams of going
north to West Point melted like the river ice washed down and marooned on
the hot mud of the Mississippi banks.

Fred Phelps, by his own description, "went to a little Methodist revival
meeting and had what I think was an experience of grace, they call it down
there. I felt the call, as they say, and it was powerful. The God of glory
appeared. It doesn't mean a vision or anything, but it means an impulse on
the heart, as the old preachers say."

The revival had a profound effect on both Phelps and Capron. "The two of
them 'got religion'," said Joe Hamilton. Friends and relatives claim the
two boys became so excited, they were unable to distinguish reality from
idealism--they were going off to conquer the world.

One relative still in Meridian described it this way: "Fred, bless his
heart, just went overboard. If you didn't accept it, he was going to cram
it down your throat."

Was this radical change in behavior a characteristic of the conversion
experience? Or was there something hidden in the young man's character
that drew him to the experience and its consequent license for loud and
abusive behavior?

If the latter, then some heart should be heard pounding beneath the
floorboards in the old Phelps' house. Yet, there is little to be heard.

Fletcher Rosenbaum, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force who
lives in Meridian, went to high school with Phelps. "He was good at
whatever he tried," Rosenbaum says. "He was a first-class individual. I
would be surprised if he wasn't a top-notch citizen in Topeka."

Picketing AIDS funerals and the fax attacks on members of his community by
Phelps surprised Rosenbaum:

"He was very reserved in high school. Very quiet. I'm surprised he would
be involved in aggressive activities. To me, it would be out of character
for him."

This observation may not be entirely accurate.

One woman, a librarian at the Meridian Public Library, said she remembers
Phelps and went to school and church with him. "He doesn't bend," she
observed. "He never did." She also described him as "spooky", "different",
and "a preacher prodigy."

"You tell him not to do it, and he'll do it," said another Meridian woman.
"He was a very determined person. That's to be admired, but it can be
taken too far."

Even Fred himself remembers differently. He was a boxer throughout high
school and, reminiscing briefly about his days in Meridian, he chuckles to
himself.

If any of the other boys came to class with a puffy face or shiner, their
friends would ask if they'd been sparring with Phelps.

He always left his mark on them, he tells me proudly.

Sid Curtis, a grade-school classmate of Fred's, remembers the future
pastor drew well, even then.

What did he draw?

Boxers.

A golden glove contender in high school, Fred fought twice in state meets,
winning matches which, according to him, were head-on slugfests.

Not aggressive?

Not the Bull of Topeka yet, but clearly it was in his character.

A story in the high-school paper, predicting the futures of Phelps and his
classmates, reads: "Fred Phelps will box in Madison Square Garden next
June, 1954. Young Phelps will fight for the world championship."

One can only wonder what deep currents rose in the teenager whenever he
climbed into the ring.

Recalling the earlier testimony of his sons, Nate and Mark, and
remembering that research has proven abusive behavior is passed with high
probability from one generation to the next, the question must be raised:
Was the Pastor Phelps equally abused as a child?

In the South, there is an unwritten code you don't bad-mouth one of your
own. Strangers are welcome unless they ask too many questions, or speak
ill of Southern folks and ways.

In fact, if ET had come down in Meridian instead of Southern California,
and a yankee inquired about that today, folks would probably scratch their
chins, figure the carpet-baggers with a knowing eye, and say he was a
quiet boy, little short for his age...but had good hands for the piano...

If the stories his sons have told are true, the outside observer has two
choices in understanding Fred Phelps: either there's a pounding heart
under the floor in that old house or the teenager's Saul-into-Paul
experience produced the character change. However, many Christians might
find it difficult to believe that discovering Jesus would render a
good-natured, quiet lad into the bullying hostile whose trail we will
shortly follow from Vernal, Utah to Topeka, Kansas.

If something did happen to throw Fred Waldron Phelps off track, something
that mangled him for life, no one in Meridian wanted to say. Doing that no
doubt would be to speak ill of the dead--something Pastor Phelps also was
taught to avoid.

Yet, suddenly at 16, the child has become the man: fanatic, unempathic,
combative, and vindictive.

If there is an answer to the question, 'why does Fred hate us all so
much?', perhaps it lies in those years, age five to 15, when his father
was largely absent and Fred and his sister were cared for by Irene Jordan.

"If he were dead, I'd talk," says Fred's sister, Martha Jean Capron, now
residing in Pennsylvania. "But as long as he's alive...that's up to
him..."

Following the revival experience, Phelps abandoned plans for West Point.
He moved to Cleveland, Tennessee, where he attended Bob Jones College, a
non-denominational Christian academy.

John Capron went with him. While Fred and his boyhood chum would
eventually separate over religion, Martha Jean and Capron never would:
they were married and moved to Indonesia as missionaries. John was a
minister there for ten years. Later he would smuggle Bibles into Communist
China.

Pastor Phelps' brother-in-law died of a heart attack in 1982.

Perhaps it's a shame Phelps didn't go to West Point. An army career could
have provided a healthy outlet for his aggression, been more compatible
with his demanding and commanding nature, while his strong body, mind, and
will would have been an asset to the service and his country.

If he'd survived Korea as a 2nd lieutenant, probably he'd have been a
lieutenant colonel by Vietnam. There he'd almost certainly have chipped
his Manichaean mandibles of dualism on that war's hard bone of moral
ambiguity. Either he'd have ended on a river somewhere, whispering "the
horror...the horror..." to bewildered junior officers, or gained a wider
horizon and returned home to retire an urbane cynic and Southern
gentleman.

But in 1946, Fred Phelps had a year to kill instead of Nazis or North
Koreans. The revival took him from Meridian to Bob Jones; from there the
future pastor found another outlet for his anger.

This one gave instant gratification and conferred adult license to abuse
almost overnight: lip-shooting preacher; revivalist minister.

And, unlike Vietnam, here God was unequivocally on his side...

As part of a Rocky Mountain mission assignment in summer, 1947, Phelps and
two other students from Bob Jones were to seek out a fundamentalist
church, convert non-believers to Christianity and steer the converts to
that church. The three men chose Vernal, a town in northeast Utah. They
would be working to convert, not secular hedonists, but a population that
was predominantly and staunchly Mormon.

When Fred and his friends got there, they set up a meeting tent brought
from Bob Jones in the city park. A local Baptist minister provided them
food and lodging (B.H. McAlister, who would later ordain Phelps).

During the day the do-it-yourself apostles went door-to-door, seeking
converts to the good news. At night, they conducted revival meetings in
the tent.

Only no one came.

So Ed Nelson, one of the trio, had an idea.

He went to a local radio station and asked if he might buy a block of
time.

Nope, was the reply. Not if you're going to attack the Mormon church.

Ok, said Ed, can I announce I'll be giving an address tonight at the tent?

Sure.

So Ed Nelson announced on the radio he'd be doing just that. And the title
of the speech? 'What's Wrong with the Mormon Church?' says Ed, over the
air.

That night, continues Nelson, now 69 and a traveling Baptist evangelist
based in Denver, a huge crowd arrived. It was so large, the trip had to
roll up the sides of the tent.

Ed was nervous, but he gave his speech. The crowd listened politely. When
the young evangelist was finished, a man in the crowd asked would there be
questions.

Sure, said Ed.

But the very first one stumped him, Nelson confesses disarmingly, and he
panicked. Flustered, he announced there would be no more questions.

Several in the throng protested, saying that, after sitting in courtesy,
listening to their religion attacked, they weren't going to let the young
men off so easily--that they should be willing to answer the crowd's
questions.

At that, Fred rushed one of the men speaking and started to throw a punch,
but Ed grabbed his arm and shouted:

"Fred! Fred! No! Don't you do it!"

"And," Nelson recounts, "Fred looked at that guy and he said, 'you shut
your mouth, you dirty...' something or other."

Which, to Ed, only compounded their troubles.

Fred's companion then raised his arms and shouted, "Folks, the meeting's
over! It's over!" And he rushed out and killed the lights inside the tent.

This discouraged any further theological discussion.

It would seem this format--speak one's mind, then take violent offense at
anything less than complete agreement, and suppress all opposing views by
any means handy--was the major life lesson learned by Fred Phelps during
his sojourn among the Vernal heathen.

"He was hot-headed and peculiar," remembers Nelson about Fred then.
Eventually the minister decided to cease his association with Phelps
because of his hostility and aggressiveness.

"The last time I saw him, he was traveling through (on the road
preaching). My wife and I gave them a hundred dollars and a bunch of
handkerchiefs."

When told of what Phelps was doing today, Ed said: "I'm not surprised. He
was heading that way. He was so brilliant, he was dangerous. He was
getting involved in the idea that only he was saved...going into
heresy..."

Though vandals damaged the tent, the boys from Bob Jones continued to hold
nightly meetings there during the rest of their vacation. No one came, but
Nelson reports they did manage to convert two teenage girls--at least for
the summer.

At the end of their stay, Fred got ordained.

Ordained? At 17? Isn't that too young?

"No, it isn't," replies B.H. McAlister, who did the ordaining. "If he can
pass the test, he is eligible. I don't think the word of God is bound by
age."

Phelps was at least three years younger than most when they become
ministers.

Southern Baptists do not require a candidate for the ministry be a
graduate of seminary.

McAlister, who has helped ordain hundreds of ministers, said an
examination board of 10 to 20 ministers would ask a candidate questions
about doctrines and scriptures. Not everyone passed.

Fred Phelps did--but only after McAlister and a missionary convinced the
teenager he was wrong on a scriptural fine point.

Which point was that?

According to McAlister, Phelps considered the local church to be more than
a place of fellowship--for him, membership in the local congregation
directly corresponded to membership in the Body of Christ.

Phelps may have conceded the point to be ordained, but, for 40 years, his
family and church members in Topeka have been controlled by his threat
that, if they depart his congregation, they must carry a letter of
permission from him. In addition, they must join a congregation that he
approves. Otherwise, as with Mark and Nate, the pastor Phelps draws up the
dreaded missive ordering the straying sheep to be 'delivered to Satan for
the destruction of the flesh.'

"We barely knew him," admits McAlister, who settled upon Fred the
distinction of having been both baptized and ordained in a single eventful
summer.

Phelps returned that autumn to Bob Jones, but left after a year without
graduating. Later he would say he did so because the school was racist.

In 1983, the IRS revoked the tax exemption of Bob Jones, accusing it of
practicing racial discrimination.

From there, Fred went north to the Prairie Bible Institute near Calgary,
Alberta. But after two semesters he moved on.

Sources have disclosed the head of the college felt pastor Phelps might be
clinically disturbed.

Compatible with that diagnosis, Fred's next stop was Southern California.
There he enrolled at John Muir College in Pasadena.

Campaigning to change community sexual mores with a sign and a sidewalk
harangue has been a four-decade effort for Fred. His implacable efforts at
John Muir to root out necking and petting on campus and dirty jokes in the
classroom reached the pages of TIME magazine (11 June 1951).

After being forbidden to preach on campus and getting removed at least
once by police from college property, Fred finally found a following that
cheered his defiance of authority when he returned to harangue from a
sympathizer's lawn across the street.

TIME speculated it might presage a movement back to more solid values by
the younger generation.

Phelps cashed in on the notoriety of the TIME article to become a
traveling evangelist again--this time with more success than in Vernal.

In return for spending a week or two preaching at an established church or
giving a revival, he would receive a bed, his meals, and a small stipend
for gas to the next assignment. It was during one such ministry in Phoenix
that he met his wife, Marge.

She was a student at Arizona Bible School and an au-pair with the family
that took in the itinerant evangelist. Today's Mrs. Phelps remembers being
curious about the minister who'd been in TIME magazine.

Laura Woods, the mistress of the house who gave voice lessons during the
day, remembers Fred was the perfect guest. He helped build a room, mowed
the lawn, made the beds, and washed the dishes, she said.

When the couple decided to get married, Mrs. Woods made Marge Simms two
dresses--a wedding gown and an outfit to travel in. They were married May
15, 1952. Laura and her husband, Arthur, remain friends today with Fred
and Marge Phelps.

The couple moved to Albuquerque for a year, where Marge kept house while
Fred traveled a circuit around the Southwest--one that took him from
Durango, Colorado to Tucson, Arizona.

Fred Jr., the first of their thirteen children, was born May 4, 1953.

The family then lived in Sunnyslope, Arizona for a year while pastor
Phelps continued his itinerant ministry.

Mrs. Phelps was eight months pregnant with Mark when Pastor Leaford Cavin
at the Eastside Baptist Church in Topeka invited Fred to come and preach.

On Fred Jr.'s first birthday, the family arrived in the Kansas capital to
find it an auspicious day indeed: May 4, 1954 was the day the U.S. Supreme
Court handed down its historic decision, Brown vs. Board of Education of
Topeka, the landfall desegregation case which ruled separate but equal
schools for blacks and whites were unconstitutional.

The Pastor Phelps saw the coincidence of the Brown decision --just as he
was deciding where to settle--as a sign telling him that Topeka was The
Place.

On that watershed day for America, if the new arrivals visited the state
capitol building, perhaps Phelps was struck by the dramatic mural of the
raging giant on the burning prairie, rifle in one hand, Bible (law book)
in the other.

Perhaps, as he has hinted, Pastor Phelps came to Topeka, saw it had become
a national forum on black civil rights, saw the power of the legal
profession, and decided it had fallen to him:

Kansas would have a new John Brown.

CHAPTER FOUR

"Dog Days for the Pastor"

Before greatness could be thrust upon him, however, this new John Brown
would suffer his dog days.

At first, the new arrivals sailed smoothly into the Eastside Baptist
community. Fred was roundly admired for his thunderous preaching, and was
quickly hired an associate pastor. The ladies at Eastside all liked Marge
and made the young mother welcome in their circles.

Things went swimmingly.

The Eastside congregation was planning to open a new church across town,
and it seemed natural when their pastor, Leaford Cavin, asked Fred to fill
the job.

The Eastside church issued bonds to purchase the property at 3701 12th
Street. To help Brother Phelps get underway, the congregation re-roofed
the building, painted it, and bought the songbooks necessary. A start-up
group of about 50 former members of Eastside volunteered to attend
services at Westboro. The church formally opened on May 20, 1956.

Fred had it all. A fine church and a congregation of his own.

What went wrong?

What did provides an insight into the man who craves a greater and greater
role as a moral arbiter of our times.

"We gave him his church; painted; roofed it; even bought his songbooks;
and after only a few weeks, he turned on us," says a long-time member of
Eastside.

Apparently not everyone in Leaford Cavin's church was enthusiastic about
Phelps. One from that time recalls Fred, Marge, 2 year-old Fred, Jr., and
10 month-old Mark were in the pews one Sunday with the rest of the
congregation, listening to Cavin preach. Mark began squirming suddenly.

To the appalled amazement of his fellow worshippers nearby, the junior
pastor repeatedly slapped the infant across the face with an open palm and
backhand, snapping Mark's tiny head to and fro.

Afterwards, several of the men in the congregation confronted Fred and
told him never to do that again.

Mark Phelps laughs to hear that story relayed: "My mom once told
me--proudly, as if she'd effected a big change in his behavior--that my
father had beaten my older brother when he was only five months old. She
said she'd argued with him about it and he'd agreed to hold off beating
the kids till they were a year old."

"Phelps was wrapped pretty tight, even back then," recalls an old member
of Eastside. "He was very severe with his children and a lot of people
didn't care for him. But we all thought he was a man of God."

Within weeks after receiving his new status, building, and congregation,
Fred Phelps warmed on the hearth of Eastside's hospitality and but the
hands that had helped him.

He and Leaford Cavin had an almost immediate falling-out over whether God
hated the sinner as well as the sin.

"Today, Fred will tell you it was theological differences," says an
acquaintance of Cavin, "but those differences didn't seem to bother him
when he needed out help."

Adds another: "Theological differences? Brother Cavin was a very staunch
Baptist."

But not staunch enough for Fred?

"I don't know if there ever was a man more strict than Leaford Cavin.
Really, it was the anger in Fred, not doctrine, that caused him to act the
way he did."

When a man in Fred's new congregation came to him for marital counseling,
the pastor recommended a good beating for the wife. The man followed his
spiritual guide's advice.

Later, he called the pastor to ask for bail: apparently separation of
church and state didn't apply to assault and battery.

Phelps paid the confused Christian's bail, but stuck to his guns: a former
members of the early Westboro community remembers the following Sunday
Pastor Fred was fiery in his message that a good left hook makes for a
right fine wife:

"Brethren," preached Phelps, "they can lock us up, but we'll still do what
the Bible tells us to do. Either our wives are going to obey, or we're
going to beat them!"

"Leaders," observes B.H. McAlister, the minister who ordained Fred, "break
down into shepherd and sheep-herders. The first lead, the second drive the
sheep. If love is absent, the pastor is one who drives the flock; with
love, he leads it."

Mark remembers his father used to frequently tell of the time he purified
the flock and paid the price for his courage.

Apparently a female member of that early Westboro congregation was
discovered having an affair with a soldier from Ft. Riley.

Only the males in the congregation were allowed to vote, and the pastor
prevailed upon them to cast the magdelene from the midst.

Away from the effects of his heated rhetoric, however, many of those
swayed felt first remorse, then disgust at their part in the moral
lynching.

Mark remembers his father always referred to this incident to explain why
his congregation had deserted him.

In later years, Phelps was convinced he was alone in his church with only
his children to listen because those who'd opened Westboro were too weak
for the harsh truth of God: that He hated sinners as well as the sin; and
therefore His elect must also hate the sinners--even those who might be
assembled with them.

If the local Baptist churches were still unsure about the new fire and
brimstone brother from Arizona, shooting his neighbor's dog didn't help.
Aside from etching one of his children's earliest memories,
shotgun-blasting the large German shepherd that had wandered into his
unfenced yard quickly got the novice pastor notice in his community.

The incident was discussed in the papers, and the dog's owner sued the
arrogant minister. Fred defended himself and won, an action his son Mark
believes may have encouraged his father's turn to the law.

But the irrationality and violence of the act sent the last of his
congregation scurrying back to Eastside.

For weeks after the shooting, one church member recalls, someone placed
signs on the lawn in front of Westboro at night that declared
prophetically:

"Anyone who'd stoop to killing a dog someday will mistake a child for a
dog."

Soon it was clear no one wanted any part of Fred's god not if he hated
like Fred. And that posed a problem for the Pastor Phelps: he still owed
32 dollars a week on the bonds for the church, and no one was paying for
his hate show on Sundays.

To cover his mortgage and support his family, the failed pastor turned his
pitch from God to vacuum cleaners. During the following five years, he
went door-to-door in Topeka, selling those and baby carriages and,
finally, insurance.

In a pattern that held ominous overtones for the future, Phelps at some
point sued almost everyone who employed him during that period.

He also carried on a running feud with Leaford Cavin at Eastside Baptist.
Cavin spent several years trying to discover how to repair his mistake and
stop the nightmare unfolding at the Westboro church.

"Eastside held the mortgage on Westboro," remembers one churchgoer who was
involved in the finances there, "and we always hoped Fred would miss a
payment so we could foreclose. But he never did."

To save money, the pastor moved his wife and children into the church.

Since the congregation at Westboro was essentially the Phelps family,
Cavin convinced John Towle, county assessor, that Westboro should be taxed
as private residence.

The controversy was covered in the media, and the exemption for 3701 West
12th was lifted. But again the fighting Pastor Phelps taught himself
enough about the law to successfully contest the decision before the Board
of Tax Appeals.

For good measure, he sued Cavin and Stauffer Communications for libel.

He lost the suit, but the lines of his future had now been drawn: Fred
Phelps had his castle and his church and he'd learned how to defend them.
His chosen community detested him, but that was to be expected when one
was elect and immersed in a world of damned souls.

Fred was content that his god hated those who questioned him. And he was
content to remain in his private La Rochelle and sally forth occasionally
to smite the reprobate.

One old member of Eastside is philosophical about the feud with Pastor
Fred: "I'll tell you one thing, we can feel awfully lucky he turned down
that slot at West Point. Right now, he'd probably be a general--with his
finger on the button."

It was during this period that the Pastor Phelps cut the final ties with
his original family.

When talking with friends, Fred's father never discussed the son he had in
Topeka, says Fred Stokes, a retired army officer who lives outside
Meridian. Stokes was a close friend of the elder Phelps and a pallbearer
at his funeral in 1977: "He had some fundamental beliefs that were
unshakeable, but he didn't force them on anyone."

In his later years, Stokes says, Fred's father was active in the Methodist
Church. "He was a very kind, grandfatherly person. He was at peace with
himself and didn't have any rancor toward anybody at the time of his
death."

Marks tells how his grandfather, Fred, (whose name he learned only
recently from Capital-Journal reporters) once came to visit them in Topeka
when Mark was a child.

What he recalls most vividly is standing on the platform at the railroad
station with his father and grandfather. As they waited to put him on the
train back to Meridian, the preacher told the weeping old man never to
come back, not to call, nor to write.

"I remember my grandfather was crying. He told my father to get back in
the Methodist Church and stop all this nonsense."

Pastor Phelps admits there was a rift between him and his father. "He was
disappointed when I didn't go to West Point, which is understandable. He
worked hard to get that appointment for me, and he was a very active
Methodist, so he was disappointed in that. But my dad was a super guy that
I loved deeply and I miss him."

Relatives in Mississippi said the elder Phelps never really got over his
abandonment by his son. "It grieved him a lot," remembers one.

When Pastor Phelps was 15 and in his last year of high school his father,
51, married a 39 year-old divorcee named Olive Briggs.

The son would leave home soon after and grow up to be a fierce critic of
divorce.

Olive's sister, who didn't want her name used, said Olive was a kind
Southern lady who never had children and treated Fred and his sister,
Martha Jean, as if they were her own.

The new Mrs. Phelps often talked to her sister about the trouble between
the former railroad detective and his son, the Baptist preacher. "Olive
would say he grieved over that every day of his life. That he never would
have parted ways. It was his son who parted ways."

Other relatives recalled that, each year, the grandparents sent birthday
and Christmas presents to their grandchildren in Topeka. Each year they
were returned unopened.

Photos of grandpa and grandma the pastor gave his extra touch: "When they
once sent him pictures of themselves for us kids to have, I remember
watching my dad cutting them meticulously into little pieces with a pair
of scissors. Then he placed them in an envelope and mailed them back."

When the elder Phelps died in 1977, and Olive Briggs in 1985, of the two
not inconsiderable wills, Fred's father left him one-eighth and his
sister, seven-eighths. Fred's stepmother left her entire estate to Martha
Jean.

There would be no relatives dropping by from mother's side either. Though
Marge Phelps had nine brothers and sisters still living in rural Missouri
or nearby Kansas City, with one notable exception, her own children never
met them or so much as knew their names.

And the firm pastor forbade his children to play or talk with the rest of
the youngsters in the neighborhood. Says Mark:

"I wanted friends to share with and talk to, but felt it was the wrong
thing and felt guilty. They would initiate conversation or want to play,
and I would feel real scared and not know what to do or say. Sometimes I
couldn't avoid talking, and it made me feel real uneasy and scared that I
would get caught.

"My dad used to make me go and tell the neighbor kids they couldn't play
by the fence, or talk to us, or come in the yard. He'd say, "I'm tellin'
you, if those fucking kids are in this yard again and I catch them, it's
you I'm going to beat!"

"I used to have to fight the kids sometimes, or yell at them, or push them
out of the yard; or I'd turn my back and ignore them so they wouldn't want
to talk or be friendly and get me in trouble."

While this is in keeping with the 'fortress Phelps' mentality the pastor
embarked on shortly after opening Westboro, it is interesting to speculate
how much of the strange goings-on within the fortress the pastor feared
his children might reveal had they been allowed outside confidants.

When Fred's sister, Martha Jean, and her husband, Fred's teenage
best-buddy, John Capron, returned to the U.S. on a year sabbatical from
their Indonesian mission, they came to see Fred. In part, they'd come to
arrange a reconciliation between the brittle pastor and his devastated
father.

They never got started.

"He wouldn't even talk to me," Fred's sister told her nephew, Mark. The
good pastor bid her also leave and never return.

Mark remembers riding his bike along in the street, both curious and
embarrassed, watching his aunt go weeping down the sidewalk for three
blocks from their house.

With that, the vengeful minister had succeeded in cutting all lines
leading to his captive congregation. Anyone in the outside world who might
know of their existence or be concerned for their welfare had been driven
off.

After he had sold insurance for several years, Phelps had amassed enough
commissions off the yearly premiums to allow him to stop working and go to
law school. He had already transferred credits from Bob Jones and John
Muir to Washburn, then taken coursework there to receive his degree.

Fred Phelps had guts.

When he entered Washburn Law School, he had a wife and seven children.
When he graduated, his family had grown by three.

Phelps was editor of the Law Review and star of the school's moot court.
He is remembered by some of the faculty as perhaps the most brilliant
student ever to pass through Washburn Law.

If the public performance was impressive, however, the private life grew
even more dark.

"It was a very rare occasion," says Mark, "when he would come anywhere in
the house that the kids were. While he was studying the law, he'd fly into
rages because we were making noise. Mom would hide us--for the good of
all."

In fact, Phelps began to spend more and more time in his bedroom, cut off
from his family except when they were needed to run errands for him; cut
off except for his wife, whom he forced to remain with him in his bedroom
for days at a time. Apparently the pastor's sexual appetites were
voracious, and his emotional dependency even greater:

Says Mark, "Mom had to spend the major portion of her day sitting next to
him in bed, trying to say the right things to keep him calm, while he
bitched and moaned and complained and railed and carried on.

"He left the older children to take care of the younger ones while he
monopolized our mother's time and attention. We were literally left on our
own for the major portion of our childhoods."

While the pastor lolled now grossly overweight in his bed like some
Ottoman pasha, rolling in his law books and 100 pounds of excess blubber,
lecturing the wife and walls on the evils of the reprobate, wallowing in
gluttony and goat-like sexual appetites, he resembled, not so much the
John Brown of his earlier ambitions, as he did an esquired Jabba the Hut.

"The kids would sit in grime and scum and filth for hours at a time," says
Mark, "tied into their high chairs or strollers by mom, for their safety,
until she could sneak away from him to give them a diaper change, redo
their ties, and set it up for the older kids to feed them, so she could
get back to him.

"I remember when she'd come downstairs, all the kids would cluster around
her like a swarm of bees, just to touch her and talk to her."

Mark goes on: "I started doing most of the grocery shopping, by bike, with
my brother Fred when I was only seven or eight, because our mom had such a
hard time getting away. We had baskets on our bikes. We were given money
but it was never enough. It was humiliating because we would hold up the
line at the checkout while the cashiers would ask us what we wanted to
keep or take back, and then they'd do the figuring for us," Mark sighs in
the phone:

"When he wanted a chicken dinner, he'd stay in bed and have me ride my
bike two miles each way to get him one. He never thanked me.

"We'd run errands for that, or he'd send us out for a piece of apple pie
with cheese on it. And we had to get back fast. Damn fast, or he'd
complain his apple pie wasn't hot enough.

"It was a mile or two back, the pie riding in a mesh basket, and we had to
get it to him hot."

Mark pauses.

"It's pretty unbelievable when I think about it. At breakfast, my father
got bacon and eggs; the kids got oatmeal and grits. At dinner we'd have
beans and rice while he ate chicken or hamburger. Now that I'm a father
myself, that just seems incomprehensible to me.

"My father had to take care of us each year when my mom went into the
hospital to give birth. Whatever he had to do, he'd always lose his temper
and start screaming.

"We'd be too scared of him to eat--and then he'd beat us for not eating.
My saliva would not work when he was in the room and mom was gone, so, to
clean our plates, we'd throw our food under the table or into our laps and
flush it down the toilet later.

"When he took care of us, I tried to stay out of the same room with him at
all times. He would be real hard on the little ones when he dressed them.
He'd push and jerk and tug real hard. My father was so impatient and
unpredictable. You never knew what to expect or how to act."

When the children did run into Jabba-the-Dad out of his bed, it was
usually unpleasant. Mark tells of one such time:

"The day my brother, Tim, was born, Fred, Jr., and I were in the dining
room fooling around and Fred started to chase me out the back door. I ran
right into my dad."

According to Mark, the pastor started screaming at them not to horse
around. He punched both boys several times and ordered them outside to
work in the yard. On his way out, Mark rounded a corner and inadvertently
stumbled into his father a second time.

Enraged, the pastor connected with a hook to the side of his son's head.
Mark fell down dazed and stunned. The pastor began to kick him, and kept
kicking him, but Mark couldn't get up. His father screamed at him to go
out in the yard, but the boy's legs felt like jello and "the room was
rolling in vertigo".

Finally, his father left him there, sprawled and dazed like a defeated
boxer.

When Mark could stand up, he joined his older brother already at work.

Three hours later, their dad called them in.

"He told us to get into bed and not to move. He told me to turn my face to
the wall. For hours I lay like that, too scared to roll over because I
thought he might still be standing there, watching me. Finally, I fell
asleep.

"When we woke up the next day, we found he'd been at the hospital with mom
the night before. And we had a new baby brother."

Their father often slept all day and got up in the afternoon, remembers
another Phelps child. "And then everyone would hide because 'daddy was
up'.

"He habitually had violent rages that included profane cursing, beyond any
sailor's ability to curse, where he threw and broke anything he could get
his hands on," states Mark.

"My father routinely demolished the kitchen and dining room areas, as well
as his bedroom. He would not only beat mom and the kids, he would smash
dishes, glasses, anything breakable in sight; he'd even throw everything
out of the refrigerator.

"He'd literally cover the floor with debris. I remember seeing so much
broken crockery once it looked like an archeologists's dig. There was
ketchup and mustard and mayonnaise splashed across the walls, cupboards,
and floor like a paint bomb had gone off in there.

"Afterwards he'd go upstairs to the bedroom--and force mom to go with him.
It would take hours for us kids to clean up after his rages. He never
helped--he'd just dump on us and leave.

"But he wouldn't stop raging. While we were cleaning the mess downstairs,
he'd force mom to sit at his bedside upstairs while he continued to curse
and complain to her about whatever had gotten his goat."

Nate and Mark confirm the pastor's dish tantrums occurred regularly,
usually once or twice a month. Sometimes there'd be several in one week.

"It established a life habit for me," says Mark. "Even today, the moment I
get home, I'm thinking 'Is Daddy mad?'

"Our walls were stained with food," he continues. "And my mom used to cry
because she couldn't keep good dishes. My father would also bust holes in
the walls and doors. If they were on the outside, he'd fix them quickly.
On the inside, he'd leave them unrepaired for months.

"And, remember, whenever my father was beating us, or if he was tearing up
a room, the violence might only last a few minutes, but he would keep up
his tirade for hours on end.

"I'm not exaggerating. My father would literally scream--not
talk--scream-of-consciousness non-stop insults at us for hours.

"His mouth was, for all the years I knew him, the most foul, vulgar,
cursing mouth you've ever heard. There's nothing he wouldn't say,
including cursing God openly. I watched him, one day, stand at the back of
the church auditorium just outside the kitchen door, and literally jump up
and down and scream curses at the top of his lungs, like a grown-up two
year-old man."

The content or nature of those tirades is instructive. If, in fact, Phelps
did maintain this kind of vitriol for hours one end, it indicates an
individual who is seriously clinically disturbed.

Since one man's scandal might be another's vernacular, the Capital-Journal
asked Mark and Nate for a sample of one of their father's marathon
four-hour tirades.

The following, if read in a loud and angry voice (not everyone can
scream), will have a very different effect on one than if it is only
scanned. It offers a sudden and shocking subjective experience of what it
must be like inside the pastor's head--of the twisted rage and volcanic
hate that must seethe in there--assuming the sample is accurate.

Most functioning individuals are able to carry on the following Fauve
impressionist vitriol for only a minute or so...Phelps reportedly
maintained it for hours:

Shitass, Goddam, tit-ass, piss-ass Goddam, ass-hole bastard, piece of
shit, dick, son-of-a-bitch God forsaken filthy measly-assed piece of
fucking shit Goddam horses ass. You're not worth shit. You're a no good,
no account, God forsaken piss-assed little bastard. Get your ass in there
and lean over that Goddam bed, you're going to get a licken. Bitch.
Fucker. Prick, Fucker, Prick, Goddam fucker, Goddam prick, asshole, prick,
prick, fucker, fucker, fucker, fucker, fuck you, you Goddam fucking piece
of garbage. Go to hell. Fuck you. Go to hell. Prick. Fucker. GODDAMN YOU,
you fucker. You worthless piece of shit. Goddam you, you worthless piece
of shit of Goddam fucking shit. Fuck you. Go straight fucking to hell you
Goddam fucking son-of-a-bitch. God Damn You! God Damn You!!! God Damn
You!!! You Goddam asshole son-of-a-bitch. God Damn You! How dare you, you
asshole bastard prick turd. You turd. You lying, mother fucking stinking
piece of fucking shit. Fuck you, you lying sack of shit, you. Get the fuck
out of my face. Go to hell. I hate you, you bastard. I hate you, you
asshole. You Goddam prick asshole bastard, dick, piece of fucking rank
stinking fucking garbage that's as full of shit as anyone could ever be.
Get the hell out of here, you fucker. Fucker. Fucker. Go to fucking hell
you bastard. Piss-ass. Horses ass. Goddam fucker. Fucker. Fucker. Fucker.
Fucker. Fucker. FUCKER! FUCKER! FUCKER! Asshole. You bastard. You sick
Goddam son-of-a-bitch. You worthless little bastard. You Goddam asshole
prick bastard. God Damn It@@ God Damn YOU!!! GOD DAMN YOU!!! Fuck you, you
bastard. You're going to hell. You little Tit-ass. Shit-ass. Fucker
Tit-ass. You little Shitass. Piss-ass little bastard. You Goddam little
bastard, I'm going to teach you. Get the hell up there. Why did you do
this to me? Say!! What's the big idea? What the hell do you think you're
doing, bringing reproach on the church of the Lord Jesus Christ? I'm not
going to put up with your sissified wimpy asshole ways. Shut up. God damn
it. God damn it. God damn it. Keep those Goddam kids quiet. I'm not going
to tell you again. What's the big idea making all of that Goddam racket?
Say! Didn't I tell you to not make a fucking sound? You think you're so
Goddam smart thinking for yourself, when I told you what the fuck I
wanted. Keep those Goddam kids quiet or I'm going to beat the hell out of
all of you, you bitch. You bastard. You bitch. Fuck you. Fuck you, God
damn it. I'm going to beat the hell out of you; I warned you and now
you're going to catch it. Where do you think you're going. Get the fuck
back over here you son-of-a-bitch and take your beating like a man.
Fucking asshole bastard son-of-a-bitch chicken shit piece of crap, no good
little bastard. What the hell do you think you're doing, for Christ's
sake? I'm not going to put up with you, do you understand me? Do you? I
won't tolerate this bullshit. God Damn you!! I'll beat the living shit out
of you. Watch it. I'm warning you. I warned you what I'd do. It's your own
God Damn fault. I warned you, for Christ's sake. What's the big idea
getting this family in trouble like this? I'll beat you until you can't
stand up or sit down. God damn son-of-a-bitch, asshole. I told you what
I'd do if you didn't get them Goddam grades up. You little prick. How do
you like that? Does that hurt, does it? Goddam it, does it hurt? It better
hurt. If it doesn't I'll make sure it hurts. Are you fucking crazy? Are
you crazy? You must be insane. Jesus Christ, how many Goddam times am I
going to have to beat you? When are you going to learn? Say! Say! Is that
right? Is that right? When you are going to learn? You no account little
bastard. In the old testament they used to take kids like you out and
stone them to death. That's what you deserve. You ought to be taken out
and stoned. At least parents in that time had some Goddam solution to a
problem like you. That's what would cure you. You've been nothing but
Goddam grief to your mother and I since the fucking day you were born. I
wish you were dead. I hate you. Jesus Christ, I hate you. I can't stand
you. I can't stand the sight of you. You're sniffing after some whore, for
Christ's sake. You got your dick wet and now you've just gone crazy
sniffing after that fucking whore. You hot blooded little bastard. Keep
your Goddam pants on and keep your fucking dick inside. Horse piss,
bullshit, balderdash, crap, lying bastard, son of belial, reprobate.
ballamite, Goddam Horses Ass! God damn you God, you lying asshole letting
them do this to me. God damn You God, how could you let them do this to
me! What the hell do you think you're doing? God damn you God. You
son-of-a-bitch. Hey you bitch, got any good words for me? You better say
something or I'm going to kick the living shit out of you. Speak up.
Say!!! What the hell good are you? Say, what the hell good are you? What
the hell is on your Goddam mind? Speak the hell up. I'll slap the living
shit out of you until you fucking can't see straight. You pussy whipped
little bastard. You horse manure. Fuck you. Go to hell. You're going to
hell. Go to hell. Shitass. Bastard. Bitch. Horses ass. God damn chicken
shit bastard son-of-a-bitch little fucker, get the fuck out of my sight.
You little chicken shit. You piece of garbage. You're God damn worthless.
You'll never amount to a God damn thing. You're a loser and always will
be. You go along fine for a while and then you do something like this to
fuck it all up. You little asshole. You'll never amount to anything.
You're a God damn loser. You'll end up in jail you God damn deadbeat. Shut
your big dumb ape mouth, you look like some kind of fucking idiot with
your big Goddam dumb mouth hanging open. I'll beat that foolishness out of
you. Look at that foolishness leaving him, I can see it with every hit of
this Goddam mattock. It does my heart good to hear those screams and see
that foolishness leaving. What's the big idea doing that to me? Say! Why
did you do this to me Say! Say! How could you treat me this way? How could
you treat me this way you little bastard? What's the big idea? Say! I'm
not going to put up with this kind of bullshit. You're going to get a
beating. Lean over there Goddam it. You think I'm going to put up with
you? You think I don't know how to deal with the likes of you, you God
forsaken little bastard? We know how to deal with asshole kids like you.
I'll beat you. I'll beat you like the Bible says to beat you and you won't
die. Dammit woman, you know the Bible says that if you beat your child
they won't die, so shut your Goddam mouth or I'll slap you. Do you want me
to beat you fat ass? You Goddam hussy. You fat Goddam hussy. You'd think
you could give me some Goddam fucking support instead of always fighting
me and causing me all of this Goddam fucking grief. I'm not going to put
up with your Goddam sassy mouth talking back to me or telling me what to
do, you fucking bitch. I'm telling you; Goddam it; I'm warning you, I'm
going to slap the hell of out of you; you're going to catch it if you
don't shut your Goddam God forsaken mouth and back off. I'm not going to
tell you again. The next time I'm going to turn my Goddam attention to you
and you're going to be sorry. I'll cuff you around and give you a Goddam
beating. Don't interfere with my beating of this Goddam bastard one more
time. I want this fat off of that ass. I'm not going to put up with that
fat ass. If you don't lose by tomorrow, you'll get another beating. I want
that fat ass off of you, you fat bitch, you Goddam fat slut, do you get
it, you think headed bitch?

"My sisters and brothers just stood around and shaked and farted and
looked scared when dad was throwing a fit," brags Mark
uncharacteristically. "but I learned how to control my fear by working
with my hands and getting things done.

"I used to stand in the back room of the house, which was called the dryer
room, and fold clothes for hours upon hours. I learned to feel secure if I
was getting something done that was bottom line."

The voice pauses.

"Still, he'd wake us up at night with mom screaming from fear as he threw
his fits. I'd come awake and lie there feeling afraid and upset.

"I wasn't worried about being woken up, that he was upset, or even that he
was hurting mom. I was worried about survival. About what could happen if
it got worse. I was thinking about lying still in case he came in, so he
wouldn't know I was awake.

"Because, he was so crazy, we didn't know that someday he wouldn't kill us
all."

Back in those days, during the '60s, when Fred was in law school and then
a young lawyer, the neighbors would often see Marge on the porch.

"She'd just be sitting out there, crying her heart out," remembers one
former neighbor. "We all felt so sorry for her. But none of us ever went
over there to comfort her. Her husband had us all intimidated."

But if life with father was bad already--it was about to get worse.

According to Mark, who was 10 when his father graduated, Fred Phelps
became heavily dependent on amphetamines and barbituates while in law
school.

Every week for 6 years, from 1962-1967, their mother would give Mark a 20
dollar bill and ask him to go down and pick up his father's 'allergy
medicine'. Mark always got the bottle of little red pills from 'the tall
blond man' at the nearby pharmacy. He was told they were to 'help daddy
wake up'.

He also picked up bottles of little yellow pills that were to 'help daddy
get to sleep'.

But the beast already so poorly penned within Fred now came out. Under the
conflicting tug of speed that wouldn't wear off and the Darvon he'd taken
to sleep, the Pastor Phelps would often wake his family in the middle of
the night while doing his imitation of a whirling dervish whose shoes were
tied together:

"With all the drugs, he had very little body control," remembers Mark, "so
we weren't really scared of him then. But he would fall and break the bed
apart; get up and knock over all the bedroom furniture.

"Mom would start screaming and call Freddy and me to help her get him
under control and put the bed together.

"My dad's face would look totally stoned, and he couldn't focus his eyes.
He couldn't walk in a straight line, and sometimes he couldn't even get up
off the floor."

Adds Nate: "Another time when he was stoned on drugs, my dad started going
after my mom. She was yelling for help. My two older brothers, probably 12
and 13 at the time, went running upstairs and tried to force my dad back
into his bedroom. He was ranting and raving like a lunatic.

"They managed to get him inside his room and slammed the door shut and
locked it from the outside. He started pounding on the door and screaming
incoherently.

"Finally, he actually broke the door down. That seemed to calm him a bit,
and he fell back on the bed and passed out."

Without referring to his records, the pharmacist named by Mark immediately
denied he had ever filled any kind of prescription for the Pastor
Phelps--except once.

Blessed with preternaturally accurate recall, the pharmacist claimed that,
since 1962, he'd only filled one order for the pastor--a skin cream
several years ago.

Questioned again later, the pharmacist admitted he'd been filling
prescriptions written to Mrs. Phelps for decades. But he denied ever
selling her amphetamines.

According to Mark, the physician who wrote those prescriptions delivered
all or most of the Phelps children, and was their family doctor when they
were growing up. During the period in question, he at least twice reported
his doctor bag stolen and its narcotics missing. The thieves were never
caught.

When this physician shot himself in a Topeka parking lot in 1979, he was
under investigation for providing drugs illegally to his female patients
in exchange for sexual favors.

What kind of drugs?

Amphetamines.

"There was fighting one night," Mark recalls. "In the middle of the night.
Dad was stoned on drugs again. He shot the 12-gauge into a roll of
insulation.

"It was probably a suicide attempt. Only my mom and he were in the
bedroom, and it was during the middle of the night.

"What I think happened was, he was so under the influence, he was so
screwed up, and he was so mad that he was doing one of those things...you
know...I'll show all of you...I'll just get rid of this whole problem by
killing myself.

"And I think he just did it. I think he did it for the dramatics of it--of
course, he missed.

"After the incident, that roll of insulation sat in their bedroom for
almost a year.

"Our mom tried to keep things quiet and keep things contained," says Mark.
"She acted as a mother to him as well as us. Having him in our family was
like having a little 2 year-old in an adult's body--with an adult
intellect. But it's a 2 year-old that can do whatever it wants, because
there's no adult discipline, instruction, or correction involved. My
father does not subject himself to accountability of any kind.

"He didn't care about our mom, except for how she could meet his needs. He
treated her like an animal.

"We had two dogs--Ahab and Jezebel. I used to throw rocks on top of their
dog house and Ahab would viciously attack Jezebel. I thought it was funny.

"That was the way my dad treated my mom. If anything would happen that my
dad didn't like, he would beat on her, blame her, make her life miserable,
and take it out on her--even if it was out of her control.

Mark remembers one morning when he was downstairs and heard a tremendous
racket coming from their bedroom above. Furniture crashing. Fred
screaming. Their mother begging him to stop. Then her screaming too.

This went on for 20 minutes until finally his father stormed out.

All quiet.

Mark stole up the stairs, afraid his father would come back. He peeked in.
(At this point, Mark's voice breaks. It takes him a long time to describe
this, speaking in short phrases, interrupted by long pauses to control his
emotions.)

The mattress was thrown from the bed. Sheets were ripped away. Drawers
were flung out of the dresser, and the dresser kicked over. Lamps and
tables, everything was smashed and strewn about the room.

"Mom?" he called.

He couldn't see her. "Mom?"

Mark heard a sob. Then a long, low agony moan.

He walked stiffly into the mess. Picked his way across the floor. In the
corner, behind an open closet door, he found his mother cowering. Her face
in her hands as the sobs wracked her body, she told her frightened child
over and over: "I can't take this anymore...I can't take this anymore...I
can't take it...I don't know what I'm going to do..."

For awhile she did nothing.

Mark remembers there were times when his mother would get out and go to
the store, especially when his father was asleep:

"She'd go to Butler's IGA. And after she'd go to the bowling alley and the
little coffee shop there. Four or five times I saw her in there when she
didn't know I did. It made me feel sad, because it was such a lonely thing
to see her, sitting with that coffee and donut, and know it was her safe
harbor, the only time she had alone. She looked so unhappy and despairing,
sitting there staring at nothing, the coffee getting cold and the donut
untouched."

Then one winter Saturday afternoon when Mark was 9 years old, his mother
called him over to her. She whispered: "I've had it. I can't take it.
Would you get the children's clothes and load as much as you can in the
trunk and the back seat?"

Mark packed the clothes in the old white Fairlane 4-door. When the pastor,
luxuriating in his bed upstairs, fell asleep around 4 p.m., their mother
came down softly. She had Mark gather the rest of the kids.

"We're leaving," she told them.

Somehow they all fit inside the car, the mother behind the wheel, and the
9 kids wherever they could find space.

"We looked ridiculous," admits Mark. "And I remember the toll-takers at
the turnpike laughed at us. But I'll never forget that day...the feeling I
got as we drove away from that house.

"It was a cloudy day, and cold, but I remember feeling hopeful. Thinking
we were headed to a new life. And it was going to be better than the one
behind us."

Marge fled the good Pastor Phelps with her flock to Kansas City. She went
to her sister Dorotha's apartment. Most of her original family hadn't seen
Marge in 15 years, not since she'd left for school in Arizona.

Dorotha's Profitt's husband drove a truck for a renderer, a business that
collected dead animals for glue. Marge Phelps' sister no doubt gave her
the bad news: driving for a rendering company didn't bring in enough to
feed 10 extra mouths; and the apartment couldn't possibly hold them all;
she couldn't stay there...

In fact, there was no place for a pregnant woman with 9 children to run
except back to the man who beat her, but paid the bills.

Mark remembers his mother stoically dialing the number for the Westboro
church. Silently, the children crawled back into their niches among the
clothes-filled car.

When they arrived home that night, the pastor was waiting for them.

His son recalls he had arms folded and he was smiling. It was a cold leer
that Mark will never forget:

"It was smug, it was cruel; and it said, 'there is no escape'."

CHAPTER FIVE

"The Children's Crusade"

The pastor's heavy drug use continued from 1962 until late 1967 or early
1968, according to Mark Phelps.

Confined to itself and tormented by an increasingly explosive, abusive,
and erratic father, the family hung on day-to-day.

Finally, Fred's system could no longer withstand being wrenched up by reds
in the morning and jerked down by barbituates at night. One day, he didn't
wake up.

Mark remembers seeing the long, gray ambulance in the driveway. His father
had slipped into a coma from toxic drug abuse.

Fred Phelps remained in the hospital for a week, while Mrs. Phelps told
the children he had suffered an adverse reaction to an 'allergy medicine'.

When he emerged, Phelps was drug-free and powerfully resolved to regain
control of his body. If it was the temple to his soul, he had neglected
it.

With an astounding strength of will, he immediately plunged into a
water-only fast, dropping from 265 to 135 in 47 days. During the fast, "he
looked like a scarecrow," says Mark. "He stalked about the house with a
scarf around his head, clutching a bible to his chest."

But the Pastor Phelps broke his addiction and never relapsed.

To keep his weight down, he turned first to health foods and then to
running. Emaciated at 135, Phelps today is a trim 185 on a 6'3" frame.

One day, after he had been running for some time, the pastor read about
the new science of aerobics on the back of a Wheaties box and decided the
entire family should join him.

Fred loaded the ten oldest children in the station wagon, drove them to
the Topeka High track, and, not unlike Fred's Foreign Legion, ordered them
to march or die. Actually, they were told to run or get beaten.

Their ages when this concurred were: 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and
16. Of the three youngest, two were little girls.

They were forced to run five miles a day--sun, rain, or snow--and then the
pastor upped it to ten. By the summer of 1970 a year later, Phelps decided
they were ready for the marathon.

Every weeknight the 10 children, now aged 6 through 17, ran 10 miles
around the track. On Saturdays they ran a marathon. Only on Sundays were
they allowed to rest.

"We'd run from the courthouse in Topeka, down Highway 40 to the courthouse
in Lawrence," says Mark. "Or from Topeka to Valley Falls or St. Mary's. My
mom would follow with the three toddlers in the station wagon, going up to
the lead, and coming back to the stragglers."

According to Mark, that lead runner was usually him, with the pastor a
distant second. "I was the ultimate yes-man all the time I was growing
up," he confides, "but not that. I decided every time we ran I was going
to beat him--do it bad."

And run he did. Mark reports that, by the time the family entered the
Heart of America marathon in Columbia, Missouri, he was climbing off his
daily 10-mile training runs in 60 minutes. He placed 17th overall in the
Columbia race. He was only 16 years old.

Tim, the six year-old who'd turned seven a few weeks before the race,
finished last behind his father and nine siblings. It took him seven hours
to complete the course.

"It's one of the more difficult runs in the U.S.," observes Mark Thomas,
owner of Tri-Tech Sports in Lenexa, Kansas. He has spent over 20 years as
an athlete and sports consultant. On his staff are current and former
members of the U.S. National Biathlon and Triathlon Teams.

He remembers the 1970 Heart of America race. A runner's club he had
organized in Sedalia, Missouri competed there.

"I remember several in our group came back disgusted as what they had
seen. Apparently some of the smaller Phelps children had told them they
weren't running voluntarily."

In general, says Mark Thomas, experts don't recommend running marathons
under age 16. (Prominent sports physicians contacted by the
Capital-Journal concur, but they declined to be named in an article on
Fred Phelps.)

"It's just not a wise idea, especially for a six year-old," continues
Thomas. "Even without medical advice, common sense and a minimum of
parental concern is all you need to see the stupidity of that,"

Among the potential negatives reviewed were: soft tissue damage;
developmental problems in the knee joints; high vulnerability to fatal
heat stroke; and hitting the 'wall' (running out of glycogen) long before
the adult limit at 20 miles. The last is important, advise sports doctors.
A small child forced to run through the physical agony of their 'wall' can
be emotionally damaged by the experience.

To put it simply, forcing six, seven, and eight year-old children to run
26 miles is nothing short of brutally abusive.

However, Runner's World found the running Phelps newsworthy, not once--but
twice. They were featured in an article about the Columbia marathon in the
November, 1970 issue, and again in November, 1988.

Though Pastor Phelps had given up speed and downers, ate healthy, and ran
daily, the radical mood swings, rages, and aggression remained:

"One day my father and I were running down at the track inside the YMCA.
There was an old blind man who always jogged on the inside lane because he
could feel the edge of the track with his cane.

"My father was in a sour mood that day, and the old man was weaving a bit
as he worked his way around the track with his stick to guide him. My
father began to threaten him each time he lapped him, telling the blind
jogger if he didn't stay out of my father's way, my father would knock him
out of the way.

"Finally, the old man started crying. He left the track and stood there
crying--I guess what were tears of frustration--and then he left.

"I never saw him back there again."

Phelps was also a poor loser, according to his sons. Sometimes Mark and
the pastor would go on long runs around the town. They started to race on
the home-stretch once, and Mark beat him back by several blocks. At first
his father took it with grace, says Mark, observing his son 'has really
shifted gears and left him behind'. Minutes later however, when were
standing in the kitchen, each with a large glass of icewater, suddenly the
elder Phelps flung his hard fist into his son's face. And stalked out.

If his body was healthy, Pastor Phelps had yet to achieve wealthy and
wise. More trouble was ahead for him--money trouble.

According to Mark, in 1968 their finances were still very tight, even
though Fred had passed the bar. The son remembers his mother opening the
mail one day and showing him a $100 check. "It's all we have for a month,"
she told him, and she started crying.

Later, the pastor was melting some World's Finest Chocolate to make
chocolate milk. In the midst of stirring it, he suggested someone should
take the rest of the candy and see if they couldn't sell it around the
neighborhood. Mark jumped at the chance:

"I watched my mom cry and cry when the checking and savings accounts were
empty. I watched her cry when the mail box didn't have a check in it
because dad hadn't worked in so long.

"So I worked. I worked so my dad would like me. I worked so mom would love
me. I worked so dad wouldn't beat me. I worked so I would feel like I was
on the team. I worked when dad was throwing his rages. I worked when I saw
mom crying. I worked because mom said, 'you're my good little helper, and
I need you to do this because I have to be with him'. I worked because mom
would cozy up to me and ask me to work, like a confidant and partner would
ask another close partner to stand with them to get through a tough
circumstance. But it was never enough."

Not long after, Fred Phelps was suspended from the bar two years for
cheating and exploiting his clients. During that period, the candy sales
would be the family's only source of income.

The Phelps children were up to the challenge: "Basically, we had to raise
ourselves," says Mark. "It would have been a lot easier if we'd just been
left alone to do our own parenting, but we also had to look out for a
crazy father. I mentioned Fred Jr. and I began doing all the grocery
shopping when we were only six and seven years-old? And the kids did all
the household chores? So, working for a living we just took in stride with
the rest of our adult responsibilities."

During the school year, Mrs. Phelps would pick the children up after class
and take them directly to that day's targeted area. The vertically
challenged sales staff would then divide into teams of two or three for
safety, canvassing neighborhood homes and businesses. Every hour, they
would rendezvous back at the LZ for resupply from mom at the station
wagon. Workshifts on weeknights went from 3:30 to 8 p.m.

On weekends and during the summer, the candykrieg blitzed major metropoles
within a 4-hour drive of Topeka: Kansas City, Lawrence, Wichita, Omaha,
and St. Joseph. Hours, including wake-up, preparations, and transport,
stretched from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m.

"There were a lot of times when we would be out there well after dark, and
snow was on the ground," says Nate.

The Phelps family selling candy door-to-door at night and in the snow
attracted the attention of Topeka police, who received occasional queries
about the welfare of the children, a law enforcement source recalls.

But detectives found no violation of the law, and no charges were ever
filed.

"We sold candy, and we sold candy," observes Mark.

"It was an art," agrees Nate.

Family loyalists Margie, Jonathon, and Shirley are quick to defend their
memories. Public sales taught them a lot about the world outside their
church, they insist. And they learned a good deal about human nature, adds
Margie. Today, the Phelps children are full of stories about their
adventures on candy crusade.

Jonathon and Rachel tell of selling in a bad part of Kansas City one night
and realizing the women on the sidewalks around them were actually men.
The boy is father to the man, and Jonathon immediately held forth with the
latest 'fag' joke making the rounds at his junior high.

One transvestite pulled a switchblade and gave chase. Jonathon grabbed
little Rachel (age 8) and, clutching their boxes under their arms, they
fled down an alley pursued by the man in high heels.

Jonathon, say Shirley and Margie, laughing till tears come to their eyes,
can still remember the sound of the candy rattling inside his boxes and
the click of high heels on pavement behind him.

The end of the tale?

It was a blind alley. Jonathon Phelps got 'bitch-slapped' by a guy in a
dress to teach him a lesson, chokes Margie.

Many of the stories center around Tim, the youngest Phelps son--the tough
little kid who spent his sixth year training for the marathon.

According to the Phelps sisters, 9 year-old Tim was slightly built, with
red hair, a freckled face, and big blue eyes. But he had a booming voice
that belied his frail size and innocent appearance. "He sold the most
candy, by far," says Margie. "He did it on cute."

Once, giving his carnival pitch in his King Kong voice on a crowded
elevator at the Merchants' Bank in Topeka, Tim overwhelmed a modeling
scout who happened to be riding down with him. The scout got him a job in
a television ad for Payless Shoes.

On another occasion, the host of a radio show in Wichita heard Tim hawking
his Coco Clusters one night, and invited the lad to open the show. So Tim
did, bellowing out: "It's Diiiiiiick Riiiiiiipy!"

The owner of a restaurant in North Topeka felt sorry for Tim, his sisters
report. Whenever Tim went there, the man always bought all of his candy,
then gave him a coke and let him sit at a table to rest his feet and
daydream. One night when he was doing just that, Tim overhead a diner
speaking ill of his father.

Up popped the little boy, gripping his ice-cold glass. Determinedly, he
marched over the offending table and flung the Coke in the surprised man's
face.

If the diner was outraged, he was in for another surprise: the
restaurant's owner kicked him out and let Tim stay.

"During those years," Margie observes, "we learned more about dealing with
people than most learn during their entire lifetime."

While Mark and Nate also have funny stories to tell from their time on the
candyblitz, according to them, the Phelps' sisters are selective in their
recollections.

At first, say the brothers outcast, their father asked them to sell on
commission.

"That didn't last very long," adds Mark. "One night we came home and he
said he'd changed his mind--he wanted us to hand over our share. We kids
were reluctant at first. We'd worked hard for it and now he was going back
on his word. Then he went into a rage and--believe me--we turned it over
real quick."

From there, things went from bad to worse. The former door-to-door vendor
of baby carriages and vacuum cleaners knew about sales quotas and target
volumes.

"If we sold enough candy that day, my father would be in a good mood that
evening and everyone could relax. But if we came back not having generated
the amount expected, my father would take it and then get real moody.
Sooner or later, he'd find something to get mad about and one of us would
get a beating that night."

Mark goes on to explain how he became the 'bull' in charge of motivation
in the field. If one of his siblings hadn't sold their share of the candy,
in the car on the way home suffered the 'chin-chin'. The offender, sitting
in back, had to lean forward and rest their chin on the front seat. Mark,
sitting in front, would then slug them in the face.

The laggard peddler was called to justice by the harsh command:
(So-and-so) Chin-chin!

"We never celebrated the holidays." Mark's voice is sad with memory. "We
sold candy instead. You know the only Christmas cheer I ever saw as a kid?
Sometimes I'd ring the bell and there'd be a big gathering inside for
Christmas dinner and they'd invite me in and give me pie or a plate of
food. I'd sit there and eat and watch everyone and wish it were my family
and that I never had to leave."

Sources connected to law enforcement assure the Capital-Journal that
Margie's glowing memories of the candy campaign are indeed selective.

Because of the mounting pressure from their father to return with larger
cash sums, the children allegedly began to steal from purses and unwatched
registers in the offices and businesses they frequented to sell their
sweets.

In many of the cases, complaints were filed with statements from
eyewitnesses.

Nate Phelps admits he was one of the thieves. He seems ashamed, though he
never spent the money on himself--although in a way he did: When the day's
take was disappointing, it was often Nate who drew the black ball in the
pastor's secret lottery for violent retribution.

Among police sources, another Phelps child is remembered as having the
hottest hands. That child was allegedly connected to purse pilfering in a
legion of stores. On one occasion, the culprit was questioned by juvenile
officers concerning cash theft from the old historical museum on 10th and
Jackson in Topeka. Allegedly the child then confessed to a string of
similar crimes.

Charges were never filed, say law enforcement sources, not even in the
museum case. Apparently no one in the D.A.'s office wanted to tangle with
Fred Phelps or his children unless the crime was serious and the evidence
airtight.

But if the Westboro Baptist Church's gang of urchin vendors is remembered
for anything by law enforcement officials, it is their alleged raid on the
general offices of the Santa Fe Railroad. There, on three separate floors,
witnesses observed one child allegedly distracting employees while other
Phelps children allegedly rifled those employees' purses.

Nate Phelps states he knew nothing about that caper.

According to sources, the reports of theft grew so numerous that Topeka
police suspected the Pastor Phelps of running a 'Fagin operation' (from
the character of that name in the film "Oliver": an older man provides
food and shelter to a horde of orphans and street urchins in return for
their working as pickpockets).

Both Nate and Mark Phelps insist this was not the case. The stealing was
strictly the kids' idea, they say. But it was usually done to top off the
kitty so they wouldn't get beaten.

"My family sold candy from 1968 until 1975," says Nate, "and some of those
places we'd gone into a hundred times. By then, everyone knew the candy
sale was a scam. But, even if I'd been told 'no' a hundred times, I still
had to go back eventually for the 101st. And, if they said 'no', I still
had to bring home cash to show my dad. So..."

In the evenings, reports the boys, if their father didn't fall into a rage
and select one of his children out for a beating, then he usually remained
upstairs in bed--and demanded his wife stay with him. Whether it was to
listen to his tirades or 'comfort' him (Fred's biblical euphemism for, one
trusts, the missionary position exclusively), the result was the children
were left nightly to their own resources.

Since most of them were unable to care for themselves, and Mrs. Phelps no
longer tied the younger ones in their high chairs while she was gone, the
older kids had their hands full downstairs.

"Just trying to control the younger ones, and get them down for the night
without any noise to piss the old man off was task," says Nate.

As a consequence, the house was frequently left uncleaned.

Then, in the middle of the night, the Pastor Phelps would "wake us
screaming and cursing and raging," says Mark, "hollering we had all gone
to bed without properly cleaning everything. He would have us do a
thorough cleaning of the house then, between 2:30 and 4:00 a.m. While that
was going on, he would come up behind and kick us, push us into walls, hit
us with hand and fist on the head, beat us.

"He would make us vacuum around the edges and cracks, wash dishes, etc. I
would get up shaking physically from the sudden awakening, and from
getting out of bed so quickly in such a frightening situation.

"I would be real scared and try to work hard and fast, so he wouldn't do
any more than he'd already done. I'd try to appease him quickly so he'd
calm down and stop his violence.

"It's weird how you can feel secure in a situation like that. I'd work
hard to get warm, and the concentration and physical work would help me
get through the fear and back to a point where I felt relief from the
intense anxiety and shaking." Mark continues:

"My father would usually quiet down before the cleaning was done. He'd go
back to doing what he wanted: watching television and eating in bed. It
was such a relief when he'd gone back upstairs, that a lot of my siblings
would knock off and stop working.

"I was too mad and upset to do that. I would keep working a lot longer. I
was real mad, and I was going to work and work and work until he
apologized, or at least until I showed him that I could take whatever he
did to me."

Even after a night like that, reveille was always at 5 a.m. in the Phelps
household, adds Mark. "He'd take his big brass bell and go through the
house ringing it with a great big grin on his face."

Five a.m. brought more chores and errands before going off to school, say
the boys. After class their mom would pick them up for candy sales until 8
p.m. As soon as they got home, they'd have to change into their running
clothes, drive to the Topeka High track, and stride out 10 miles.

The runner would not return home and clean up before 10 or 10:30. After
that came dinner.

"Our family never ate together," says Nate. "Mom or one of our sisters
usually made something and left it on the stove for people to eat when
they got the chance."

Sometime after dinner and before they fell asleep, the children were
expected to cover their homework. Trying to stay awake for that, after
having run 10 miles, humped over suburban hill and dale selling peanut
brittle, and spent a day at school, was frequently physically impossible.

Yet, if they brought home bad grades, they were beaten and savage abandon.

In addition, it was usually during the homework period from 10:30 to 1
a.m. that their father would go on a rampage, or their mom would be called
up to him and leave the babies with the older kids.

With this as their daily schedule, Fred Phelps allowed his young family an
average of only four to six hours of sleep each night.

"In general, he was happy to keep us busy or gone," observes Nate.

Mark agrees: "My father could tolerate no human needs outside his own. If
you had a problem, it was not appropriate to turn to a parent for comfort,
advice, or a solution. He would get outraged whenever one of us had some
difficulty that focused attention off himself. To have a problem was to
get a beating, regardless of what kind of a problem it was, or even if it
wasn't your fault.

And if it was?

Mark takes a deep breath. He recalls one time very clearly when he drew
attention to himself.

"One night, Nate and I were out selling candy together. We were in a
residential area, and while we were selling, we'd unscrew a tiny Christmas
light from the evergreens outside people's houses. One of those tiny bulbs
on a string?

"We were only doing it occasionally for kicks. We'd 'launch' them over the
street and listen to them pop on the pavement. We didn't think anything
about it. Nate was 10 and I was 14.

"Well, I remember very clearly when we got home. I walked into the dining
room where the bottom of the stairs were, going up to his bedroom. He was
coming down those stairs just as I came in.

"Mainly I remember the look on his face. He said, 'Who was selling on
Prairie Road tonight?'

"It took me a few seconds to register that, first of all, he was really
angry, and secondly, it was Nate and me who had been selling on Prairie
Road that night. I got sick to my stomach immediately. I remember the
intense fear that came over me. I didn't know much yet, but between the
look on his face and the questions, I knew something was wrong."

Nate Phelps: "Nobody answered. He asked again. By that time, Mom had come
in. Her face was white. She said, 'Why?'"

Mark Phelps: "He said, 'I got a call from some guy who told me that there
were two boys that had come by his house tonight, and that he was a
retired police detective. Was this the church that the boys were selling
candy for. I told them it was, and asked why. He told me that, he was
sorry to have to report it, but that I should know the boys were stealing
light bulbs from Christmas trees and then trying to sell them
door-to-door. Who was it?' (The truth was, we were at the time also
selling 'Paul Revere' light bulbs that had a lifetime guarantee). Before I
could say a word, someone told him that it was Nate and I. He said, 'Let's
go.'"

Mark Phelps: "We went upstairs. He never asked me or Nate one word about
whether it was true. He never asked us for our side of the story. All he
said, after we got upstairs was, 'How could you endanger the church like
that, after all the problems we have? How could you do it, bring reproach
on the church like that?'"

Nate Phelps: "By that time, I was so scared, all I can remember saying
was, 'I'm sorry, Daddy. We didn't mean it. We're so sorry'."

What followed was the brutal, 200-stroke beating with the mattock handle
described at the beginning of Chapter Two.

Nate proceeds to describe more of life in the house of Fagin.

His father would pass through periods of manic, frenetic activity and
bombast, then spend days in bed, watching television and eating as he had
in his days of obesity.

Despite their full schedules of school, running, and child labor, the
pastor had yet one more task for his offspring during his days abed: he
kept a bell on his headboard to ring for service.

"For food, or drink, or Mom, or even the tiniest thing," remembers Nate.
"He just wouldn't get out of bed. And we'd all try to avoid going up
there. Eventually, he'd get really mad and ring and ring and one of us
would have to go. It would usually turn out he wanted a glass of water or
something like that--only a few steps away."

It would seem to be reminiscent of their father's Jabba-the-Hut days, when
the fat pastor sent his eight and nine year-old sons out, four miles
roundtrip on their bicycles, to fetch him a chicken dinner or a piece of
hot apple pie while he wallowed in bed--except Fred Phelps no longer ate
those kind of things: with a newly experimental palate, he was in hot
pursuit of his fading youth. His eye on Methuselah, he was searching out
new foods that, paradoxically, might postpone his assured arrival among
the elect in the heaven of his hating god.

If the children living in the house of Fagin already performed the
functions of domestic servants, financial underwriters, and kickbags, now
they also had to endure the role of lab rats for Fred's eccentric diets
a-la-Ponce-de-Leon.

Returning from their 10-mile runs after 10 p.m. each night, not having
eaten since noon lunch at school and having paced the pavements for five
hours selling candy, the starving children of the earnest Pastor Phelps
frequently faced such enticing entrees and one-half head of steamed
cabbage and a handful of brewer's yeast tablets. Nate remembers:

"He'd read a book and one month we'd get nothing but raw eggs in a glass
twice a day. Then he'd read another book and we weren't to eat eggs,
period."

Nate has a different perspective on Margie's charming tale about the curds
and whey:

"My father would buy a sack of powered milk and mix it with water in a
five gallon stainless steel pot. Then he'd leave it uncovered for a week
beneath the stairs. After it smelled enough to make you throw up, he'd
skim the curds off the top and make us eat it in bowls. It smelled so
horrible, some of the kids would have to go in the bathroom and vomit."

Given the massive caloric cost of being teenagers, walking a sales route,
and running 10 miles each day, it's no surprise the Phelps children turned
to the nearest, richest source of calories to satisfy their needs: the
candy they carried at work and which was stored in their very bedrooms.

For a period of about six years, the brothers report, the sweets they sold
were also the principal element in their diet. So principal, that some of
the children began to gain weight.

This visible development, particularly in Nate and his sister, Katherine,
caused the pastor great upset, says Nate. First, after his own successful
battle against obesity, Fred Phelps had little patience for it elsewhere
in the family; second, the Captain suspected some of the crew might be
eating the strawberries.

Jonathon Phelps admits he was of them: "You don't muzzle the oxen when you
want them to tread the grain," he remembers with a laugh.

It is difficult to imagine anyone who runs 10 miles a day becoming obese.
In fact, Nate reports that, at the time his father imposed his Nazi Weight
Loss program, the teenager was 5'10" and 185.

Not leathery and lean, but not worthy of comment on a large-boned male.

But to the pastor Phelps, that extra thickness on his son meant thinner
profits from the children's crusade.

So, in what, for those who didn't have to endure it, may begin to read
like a Marx Brothers script, Fred Phelps took steps. He designed a
weight-loss regimen for Nate and Kathy.

"We were required to weigh ourselves in front of him each night," says
Nate. "On his doctor's scales sitting outside his bedroom. If we didn't
weigh less than we had the day before, we got beat."

Sometimes the two were beaten every night of the week with the mattock.

"I'd eat lunch," Nate says, "but I'd throw up before going home. Or take
Ex-Lax. So would Kathy. His expectations were impossible, so we learned to
manipulate the scales.

"We'd place a small piece of tape with several metal nuts attached in the
palm of our hand. As we stepped onto the scales, we'd stick the tape to
the backside of the balance beam. This would show our weight to be lower
than it actually was.

"Unfortunately, one day the tape wouldn't stick properly and fell down.
The old man didn't see it fall, but he did see that my weight was eight
pounds higher than expected.

"'You've been eatin' my goddamed candy again!' he yelled.

"This led to an 10 hour ordeal of beatings, followed by marathon running
sessions, followed by more beatings, followed by running.

"The net result was that, at the end of the day, I'd lost 14 pounds and
seriously injured my hip. The irony is that, since that weight loss was
all fluid dehydration, when I replaced the fluids, I regained the weight.
But I didn't know that, and neither did my father."

The next day, when Nate had mysteriously shot up 14 pounds, the vexed
pastor fell into the frustrated fury reserved for benighted reformers, and
son Nate got beaten once more.

The incident manifests Pastor Phelps' trademark career combination of
ignorance and violence.

Afterwards, the teenager was literally forbidden to eat until he lost
those extra pounds.

Breakfast, Nate never got after that. And when the family lined up for the
food cooked in the great pots, Nate wasn't allowed to eat with them. If
the menu called for cabbage, curds, or liver pills, his siblings would
envy him. But if Fred relented, and something tasty awaited the hungry
children--chicken spaghetti, or stew--Nate was never given any.

Today, the man is philosophical about the trials of the boy: "I'd just
sneak food from the fridge later, or eat candy from the boxes," he
observes.

Incredibly, this father-enforced fast went on for five years.

All the while, Nate's weight continued the same, and the pastor continued
to accuse him of eating candy.

"Well...duh!" laughs Nate today. "If, after five years, I was still alive,
I must have been eating something, right?"

On his daughter, Kathy, the good pastor imposed an even harsher solution:
she was locked in her room for the biblical 40 days, given only water to
drink, and allowed exit only to the bathroom.

Kathy is the oldest daughter and the third-oldest child. She shared a
bedroom with Shirley and Margie, the fourth and fifth of the Phelps kids.
All three were close at the time.

Both Nate and Mark remember that either Margie or Shirley once smuggled
Kathy a glass of tomato juice.

Fred caught his eldest daughter with it after she'd taken it to her room.
When Kathy refused to tell who'd given her the tomato juice, the boys
report their father yelled and swore and beat her for nearly two hours.
They remark it was one of the worst beatings she ever received. It was
delivered by both fist and mattock handle to what was, literally, a
starving teenage girl.

Even Mrs. Phelps was not immune to the weight-watcher from hell.

"He got mad at her once. Said she was getting too fat," remembers Mark.
"Right in front of me, he beat her with the mattock. I mean...it was a
real...real degrading, humiliating kind of experience to watch your mother
treated like that."

Fred Phelps wears a bullet-proof vest to all his pickets yet his new-found
notoriety may not hit him in the chest, as he fears.

No, if fame hath its costs, the pastor may need a padlock for his
checkbook, for ancient creditors do stir.

The man who stands so self-righteously on streetcorners daily, denouncing
the sins of others, it seems forgot to pay for a lot of candy.

When sued for payment by his suppliers, the spiritual leader of the
Westboro Baptist Church claimed under oath that the candy received was
broken, stale, and melted; consequently, it was unsuitable for sale.

The fact that his children had already sold it was considered a testimony
to their upbringing.

However, since it had been sold and there was none to return, the court
decided the pastor should pay for the 'melted' candy, irrespective of
whether Topekans in the gallery were eating peanut brittle or peanut
puddles.

Joe Sanders, of the Money Tree Candy Co., in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to
whom alone Fred still owes $20,000, including simple interest, has
retained a lawyer to resuscitate the debt. "Back in '72, we got a court
lien, but we could never find his account," Sanders explains.

Mr. Sanders may find Mark and Nate Phelps willing to testify how their
father coached them perjury, suggesting the impressionable teenagers state
under oath that the candy, which was fresh and good, was in fact stale and
melted.

This litany of greed is not yet done.

After two years of the candy sales, the house of Fagin diversified. A
notice was placed in the paper asking for pianos to be donated to an
unspecified church. Another notice was placed in the sales' column,
advertising pianos.

According to Mark and Nate, this arrangement flourished from 1971 through
1972, until someone in the Attorney General's office connected the two
ads. Fred was ordered to stop. And did.

"But we moved a lot of pianos before then. And we made 150 to 200 bucks
each from them," says Mark.

Also, starting in 1970, for three summers, Mark and his older brother,
Fred, Jr., were cut loose from the candy sales to run a new Phelps
enterprise, a lawn care/trash hauling general clean-up business. Mark
describes it:

"At age 16, I had a pick-up and my brother had a pick-up, and we had three
lawn mowers. My dad paid for these items from our work selling candy.

"He was dispatcher and the scheduler. We were the ones that did the work.
He arranged things so tightly, we just plain worked our butts off from 5
a.m. to 10 p.m.

"He'd rush us out before dawn, no showers, no breakfast, and we'd be out
to the dump to empty our trucks and begin our first job.

"He wouldn't budget us money, nor schedule us time for lunch. My dad had
me so intimidated, I would have gone along with it, but Fred Jr. usually
said otherwise. He'd insist we take time and dollars to go to McDonald's.
Then I'd have to overbid the next job, and we'd have to finish early so
our dad wouldn't catch us."

The children's candy crusade at Westboro Baptist carried on for seven
years, from 1968 to 1975. Its stated purpose was to raise money for a new
organ in the church.

The one finally purchased had two keyboards and nine to twelve foot
pedals, say Mark, who, along with Fred, Jr., played it at church services.
"It was a Baldwin."

The equivalent organ today sells for around $4,000, far more than it did
20 years ago.

During the later years of the fundraising campaign, Pastor Phelps claimed
the church needed the money for a new carpet. At, say, 100 square yards,
it would cost $3,000 to lay a moderately priced carpet in the present
church, far more again than in 1973.

The target goal of the fundraising could then be safely placed at $7,000.

Mark and Nate Phelps have submitted their estimates of the daily cash flow
volumes during the candy sales from 1968-1975. These are not wild guesses,
as Mark was the accountant for the operation: he collected the money and
counted it at the end of each day.

Candy that was sold to our best recollections: Estimated dollars:

Half the year 1968 $22,710
The entire year 1969 $45,420
" 1970 $45,420
" 1971 $45,420
" 1972 $45,420
" 1973 $45,420
" 1974 $45,420
Half the year 1975 $22,710

Estimated total dollars from candy sales: $317,940

We estimate the average dollar amount sold for the specified days:

Weeknights during the school year: $75/night
Saturdays during school year: $300/Saturday
Six days a week during the summer: $220/day

Based on this, you can follow the figuring below:

Nine months of the school year, approximately would be:

Five week night x $75/night = $375
Saturdays = $300
Total per week = $675
$675 x 36 weeks, approximately = $24,300

Three months of summer months, approximately would be:

$220 x six days = $1,320 per week
$1320 x 16 weeks = $21,120

$24,300 + $21,120 = $45,420/year


As one can see, $318,000 does significantly overshoot the stated goal's
estimated cost of $7,000. Which leaves $311,000 unaccounted for, plus the
income from the piano sales.

The candy was marked up 100 to 200 percent from the suppliers' price.
Assuming an average 150 percent markup, $191,000 went to the Phelpses and
$127,000 to their suppliers.

But a cursory search of local court records for the years 1971 to 1974
alone turned up almost $11,000 in unpaid debt to three separate candy
companies.

According to Joe Sanders at the Money Tree Candy Co., the Pastor Phelps
placed an order with them in 1971. The company first sent him only a small
order to determine if he was trustworthy. When they received payment, they
were happy to fill a much larger order, one amounting to thousands of
dollars.

They never got their money.

Sanders believes the Pastor Phelps may have been running a scam where he
paid for the first order and stiffed the suppliers on a much larger second
one.

"There were so many candy distributors back then, it would have taken him
years to work through the list," observes Sanders.

Most of those suppliers have long since gone out of business. Their
records disappeared with them. But, if a cursory local spot check can show
that almost 10 percent of Fred Phelps' debt to his suppliers went unpaid,
the inquiring mind might ask how many other companies never went to court,
but accepted partial payment or wrote it off as a bad debt.

Assuming the boys' estimates upon which these figures are based are
correct--and that as equal a portion of unpaid debts were written off as
went to court--a very rough guess of the income off candy sales for the
seven years, 1968-1975, would be $210,000--or $30,000 a year.

Twenty-five years ago, that was nearly three times the annual salary of
the average Topekan.

Some organ.

Some rug.

What happened to the rest?

"It's obvious isn't it? says Nate. "We used it to live on."

In fact, Pastor Phelps defrauded his community of over $200,000 earmarked
for a non-profit religious enterprise. It was instead consumed as personal
income without paying a single rusty penny in taxes.

While a church must originally file an exemption from income tax as a
non-profit organization, separation of church and state mean that, unlike
other non-profit groups, a church is not required to file the annual form
990--a yearly accounting of its cash income and outlay.

Nevertheless, a church is required to keep books and records and be able
to demonstrate to IRS auditors that all income has been properly outlayed.

The burden of proof lies on the church audited.

When Westboro Baptist was incorporated in May of 1967, ominously close to
the start of the candy crusade, the church was to be used for religious
purposes only--including weekly public services, public prayers, singing
of gospel songs and hymns, receiving of tithes and offerings, and
observance of baptism and communion.

'Receiving of tithes and offerings' might well have meant legal fees in
the pastor's mind. For 11 years, his law offices were located in the
building on which he paid no taxes because it was a church. So, too, was
his domicile:

In 1960, the Eastside Baptist Church, holder of the original lien on the
property at Westboro, attempted to foreclose and evict Phelps. The cause,
as discussed in Chapter Four, was his altering the function of the
property from a public congregation to a private residence.

Indeed, with only a few exceptions, since 1958, the 'congregation' at
Westboro has been just the Phelps family.

The benefits of calling one's own family a church?

First, one can go into fundraising for oneself instead of gainful
employment. Each of us can at last be our own favorite charity.

Second, bango to those pesty property taxes.

Third, if one owns a business, they can operate it from within their
church at a fraction of the honest overhead.

To an observer, it seems remarkable that someone who has paid no personal,
property, or corporate taxes for a profitable operation--a.k.a.
"religion"--would have the inaccuracy to lecture his community ad nauseam
about its misuse of taxes.

Mark Phelps estimates the summer lawn and hauling enterprise of 1970,
1971, and 1972 netted between eight to ten thousand a season. Since it was
turned over to their father, no doubt it was declared by him as taxable
personal income for those years.

After the pastor was reinstated to the bar in 1971, the older children
were required to put in long hours assisting at the law office. By 1975
and the end of the candy sales, they were coming out of law school, ready
to take their place in the trenches against the Adamic race, and willing
to underwrite their dad's fantasies with an estimated 10 to 25 percent
tithe on their personal incomes.

The final irony of all this?

In the actual Children's Crusade of 1212, fervent Christian children from
all over France were inspired to free Jerusalem from the Moslems. Over
20,000 youths, most of them between the ages of seven and twelve, marched
across France to the port of Marseille, where they hoped the pope would
provide them ships to the Holy Land.

Unfortunately, the ship captains were mostly pirates. When the fleet
sailed, it wasn't to Jerusalem, but to the slave ports of North Africa. A
generation of child idealists were sold into chains and never heard from
again.

Of course, the pirates probably weren't ever heard from either. Certainly
they never became moral commentators or social reformers. But, back then,
pirates had more grace and self-knowledge. That is, if Gilbert and
Sullivan can be trusted.

CHAPTER SIX

"The Law of Wrath"

Nowhere was the volatile and abusive nature of Fred Phelps more visible
than in the law courts.

Six years before the bar, the ill-tempered reverend had already discovered
the law was a perfect mattock-handle to punish the world outside his
walls. Between 1958 and 1964, Phelps filed 14 lawsuits against his
employers, his customers, Leaford Cavin (the Baptist minister who'd given
him his new church), the radio station KTOP (Phelps had paid to broadcast
for 15 minutes each Sunday morning, but then had his show terminated as
too inflammatory), Stauffer Communications, former friends, and public
officials.

In addition, according to a local attorney who recalls those early days
when Fred sold baby carriages and cribs door-to-door, Phelps flooded the
equivalent of the small claims courts with requests to garnish the wages
of young couples who'd missed their payments--however briefly.

In one case, Fred Phelps vs. Rastus Lewis, which reached the District
Court in 1961, Phelps was accused by Lewis and his wife of tricking them
with lies: when they thought they were signing a note vouching for the
good credit of another couple, they were actually buying a baby-stroller
for a baby they didn't have.

The Lewises were an uneducated black couple.

Phelps was just entering law school seeking, in his words, "to relieve the
oppressed" and to achieve social justice via the courtroom--or what he
called "the judicial remedy".

There seemed, even then, no limit to the pastor's greed and no grasp of
decency in his actions:

"I remember we were amazed," one member of the court recalls, "that anyone
who hadn't been to law school could be so robustly treacherous."

One of those must have been Judge Beryl Johnson, who threw more than one
of Fred's cases out of court. And, apparently, the judge would remember
the pastor's avarice and utter lack of ethics.

To be admitted to the bar, Phelps needed a judge to swear to his good
character. The process is usually routine. Not for Fred. No judge was
willing to do that.

Phelps claims it was the same Beryl Johnson, now deceased, who lobbied the
other judges not to sign the young graduate off. Eventually, the pastor
was able to gain entry after providing numerous affidavits from other
character witnesses.

Phelps is still bitter about that today. He claims 'they' were closing
ranks against his Bible message and against his stated intent to use the
courtroom to attack social injustice. In a 1983 interview with the Wichita
Eagle- Beacon, Fred defined the 'they' who tried to keep him from the bar
as "the leading lights of the Jim Crow Topeka community...the presidents
of the First National Bank, Merchants National Bank, Capitol Federal
Savings and Loan, and the Kansas Power and Light Company..."

The pastor states that, though 'they' tried to stop him, he knew what he
had to do:

"I was raised in Mississippi. I knew it was wrong the way those black
people were treated," he says. He also accuses Lou Eisenbarth, a Topeka
lawyer, of having led a delegation of attorneys who tried to block Phelps'
admission to Washburn Law School.

Eisenbarth just shakes his head in quiet surprise. "Not me." He remembers
beating Phelps in one of the pastor's law school civil rights suits, but
says there was no delegation to block Phelps going to Washburn.

And the judges unanimously refusing to sign off?

"If that did happen, it was Phelps' bad temperament and poor judgement
that had alarmed community members enough to strenuously object to him
practicing the law. It was his litigious and malicious behavior--not fear
of any future civil rights work."

A few months after Phelps told Capital-Journal reporters, 'I was raised in
Mississippi; I knew it was wrong the way those black people were treated',
the following incident occurred:

A black woman, having to walk through the anti-gay pickets outside the
courthouse and minding her own business utterly, politely asked Jonathon
not to thrust the camera in her face. Pastor Phelps, unaware a member of
the press had come up behind him, screamed at the black woman so loud the
pavement should have cracked:

"YOU FILTHY NIGGER BITCH!"

Once inside the bar, within two years, the young esquire provided his
elders' fears were not unfounded.

As the court-appointed attorney from October to December, 1966, for a man
arrested in a forgery case, Phelps received $200 from the defendant's
ex-wife to bond the man from jail.

Several days later, the ex-wife hired Phelps to handle a divorce she now
sought from her current husband. She paid the pastor $50 to do the legal
work. The divorce was granted. Phelps kept the $200 for himself, preparing
court records to show he had been paid $250 for the divorce.

Meanwhile, the lady's ex-husband remained in jail.

In the year prior, there had been more unethical conduct. Phelps had been
hired to represent another woman seeking a divorce in March, 1965.

Before firing him as her attorney a month later, the woman had paid the
pastor $1,000 of the $2,500 fee he was charging her. Phelps had filed an
attorney's lien for the balance of the unpaid bill. But a Shawnee County
District Court judge had ruled Phelps' services weren't worth more than
the $1,000 already paid by the woman, and disallowed the $1,500 lien.

So Phelps had filed a lawsuit against the woman in the same court, seeking
the $1,500.

The Kansas Supreme Court said that amounted to harassment of his client.
It stated Phelps' conduct in the case "demonstrates a lack of professional
self-restraint in matters of compensation."

Assistant Attorney General Richard Seaton would later observe that Phelps
had shown a pattern of conduct illustrating "an uncontrollable appetite
for money--especially the money of his client."

The pastor didn't agree.

In May, 1966, he filed for the Democratic nomination to the Kansas House,
45th District. "As a Democrat, I am liberal in my thinking," he announced,
"but conservative in spending the people's money."

Meanwhile, behind the walls of Westboro, the pastor lay up for days in
bed, addicted to drugs, beating his wife and helpless toddlers, and
sending seven year-olds to fetch his hot apple pie.

A potential public servant perhaps--but one straight out of ancient Rome.

In l969, Phelps was brought before the State Board of Law Examiners on
seven counts of professional misconduct.

Seaton and then Attorney General Kent Frizzell argued that the Westboro
minister's conduct as an attorney "is one of total disregard for the
duties and the respect and consideration owed by an attorney to his
clients. Where money is concerned, the accused simply lacks any sense of
balance and proportion. Whatever the reason for this, it appears to me a
permanent condition."

Frizzell and Seaton wanted Phelps disbarred. Instead, State Supreme Court
Justices chose in 1969 to suspend the pastor for two years.

Phelps landed on his feet however: the children's candy sales took up the
slack in family income--and then some.

But the court's sanction did trouble him. It was on the first anniversary
of his suspension that Phelps decided his wife wasn't in proper subjection
to him and shaved her long hair down to a bad crewcut.

Mrs. Phelps later told the children: "He's just upset; it's been one year
today since he was suspended."

Nine months after he was released from the penalty box for cheating and
exploiting his clients, Phelps had the temerity to place his name on the
ballot for District Attorney of Shawnee County.

At the same time, not only had he just been disciplined for his lack of
professional ethics, but he was also being sued by three different candy
companies, having stiffed them for almost $11,000.

To make matters worse, he had also just eluded criminal charges for
beating Nate and Jonathon, and danced in front of his children at the news
his oldest son's fiancee had committed suicide.

One can only imagine what new turns the pastor's hate would have taken,
invested with the power of the D.A.'s office.

Because no one else had filed in a race against a popular Republican D.A.,
Phelps ran unopposed in the August Democratic primary. However, the D.A.
was required to have practiced law in the county for five years prior to
holding office. As a result of his suspension, Phelps had those years
cumulatively but not consecutively.

He held he qualified. The State Contest Board held he did not.

Phelps appealed first to the District Court, then to the Kansas Supreme
Court. He lost. He was disqualified September 28, 1972, leaving the
Democrats only five weeks to find another candidate. They lost.

Since then, the pastor has maintained bitter relations with a succession
of D.A.s--none of them Fred Phelps.

Having stumbled at the start of his public career, Phelps returned to
private practice and quickly confirmed his colleagues' fears: the angry
reverend's working preference was for largely unfounded lawsuits which the
defendants would settle out of court to avoid the nuisance of litigation.

"I was waiting in the Denver airport with him. We were working a civil
rights case," remembers Bob Tilton, a former Democratic state chairman and
an acquaintance of Phelps. "He told me had to file 20 lawsuits to get one
judgement. I said to him, "But what about the other 19 people you sue? It
costs them a lot of money and heartache to defend themselves.' He just
laughed at me."

Phelps sued Kentucky Fried Chicken for $60,000 when a female client
claimed she'd discovered a 'bug' in her breadroll; at the same time, he
sued a restaurant owned by Harkies Inc. for $30,000 because the same woman
claimed to have dined there and found a bone in her barbecue.

The client admitted she hadn't eaten either the bug or the bone, and that
she'd sought no medical treatment, yet she claimed personal damages
totaling $10,000 and punitive damages of $80,000.

KFC settled out of court for $600. Harkies likewise for $1,000.

In a third case (all three of which were first described in the 1983
expose of Phelps by Steve Tompkins of the Wichita- Eagle Beacon), Fred
sued a Denny's restaurant for $110,000. He claimed slander against his
client when the man was accused of palming a dollar bill lying beside a
register.

The restaurant settled out of court for $750.

For the most authentic taste of the law according to Pastor Fred, however,
one must turn to Sylvester Smith, Jr. versus Kevin P. Marshall. Excerpts
from the opinion of the court, delivered by Judge J. McFarland, tell all:

"On May 30, 1975, the plaintiff was a passenger in a car driven by the
defendant. The defendant drove his vehicle to the left curb of a one-way
street in Topeka, Kansas. Plaintiff exited the vehicle from the passenger
side and walked in front of the vehicle. Defendant attempted to put the
vehicle in reverse, but instead put it in neutral or drive. The
defendant's vehicle moved forward. The plaintiff's lower right leg was
caught between defendant's vehicle and a parked automobile. These facts
are not in dispute. The residual effect of plaintiff's injury was a
discoloration of a small area of skin on his leg."

The discoloration was the size of a quarter, and the plaintiff's skin was
black. A chiropractor, called by the plaintiff to testify, made a gallant
attempt:

"That is a scar right here. If you hold it just right, you can pull it and
see a scar."

In effect, Phelps had tied up first the District Court, then the Court of
Appeals, and here, the Supreme Court of Kansas over a bruised shin--a
quarter-sized scar the pastor insisted constituted a $100,000
disfigurement.

To garner the real flavor of civil litigation behind the looking-glass,
the lay reader is invited to listen in on the court's discussion of the
point at issue:

"The record should show that the Court did observe the right leg of Mr.
Smith. The parties should also note the Court's observations, the Court
did run his finger on the leg in the area that Dr. Counselman described.
And the Court's observation, from just a visual and from a touch
indication, was that there was no scarring as we understand broken skin
with a lesion over the scarring. In other words, it was a smooth feeling.

"That area that the Court did observe was ascertainable, discernible, it
being more of a, at least to the visual view of the Court, it was more of
a discoloration of Mr. Smith's leg.

"The record should show Mr. Smith is black. The area in question was
darker. It was more of a dark brown area. It was about an inch and a
quarter in length and in the middle point running North and South on the
leg toward the center, as Dr. Counselman indicated, and toward the center
of the area. It extended to, perhaps, about a half an inch. But I would
say it would be East and West across the leg and about an inch and a
quarter long. Now that is what the visual observation indicates..."

That Phelps could get a bruised shin all the way to the Supreme Court
certainly testifies to his persistence. It also reveals the predatory,
surreal and parasitic nature of civil litigation in our society.

However, before the reader loses all faith in a fast-fading institution,
we hasten to point out that reason did prevail. The Supreme Court reversed
the Court of Appeals and affirmed the decision of the trial court which
had found in favor of the defendant:

"Assuming it to be permanent, I cannot believe it is the type of
'disfigurement' intended by the Legislature to support this plaintiff's
claim for $100,000 in damages. It seems to me this is a prime example of
those 'exaggerated claims for pain and suffering in instances of
relatively minor injury' the Court recognized in Manzanares, and just the
type of 'minor nuisance' claim the Legislature intended to eliminate."

The appellation of 'minor nuisance' may, in the end, sum up the life, law,
and ministry of Fred Waldron Phelps.

Perhaps the most ridiculous example of the pastor's apparent obsessive
need to chisel for chump-change is the $50,000,000 lawsuit filed against
Sears and Co.

When Mark and Fred, Jr. placed a color television on Christmas layaway in
September of 1973, they didn't realize it had been set aside on paper, not
actually taken off the shelf and held in the stockroom. When they paid the
balance in November, they were told their TV would be ready at
Christmas--as they had originally contracted.

Three days later, the pastor filed suit in his sons' names and those of
1,000,000 other Sears' layaway customers.

"We didn't have anything to do with it," says Mark. It was strictly his
idea. In fact, when I left home that year right after Christmas, it put
him in a bind. He had a case that was missing a plaintiff."

Court documents show Sears called the Phelpses and told them the
television would be available later in November. The two Freds chose not
to accept it. Instead, they pressed their suit.

Nearly six years of litigation followed. Motions and counter motions were
filed. Lawyers argued aspects of the case in front of judges. A judge
threw out the class action section of the suit.

Finally, after countless hours of legal work and an original request for
$50,000,000, the case was settled in favor of the Phelpses for $126.34.

The boys had originally paid $184.59 for the set, but they never received
it.

These are not the files that will one day inspire a new Earl Stanley
Gardner.

By 1983, according to the Wichita Eagle-Beacon, there had been "more
complaints filed against Phelps, and more formal hearings into his
conduct, than any other Kansas attorney since records have been kept."

If in fact he did lead the judges' conspiracy to block Fred Phelps from
the bar, few would fault old Beryl Johnson today.

In 1976, the reverend-esquired was investigated by the Kansas Attorney
General's office.

In 73 percent of the pastor's lawsuits, the inquiry discovered the
defendants had settled or agreed to settle out of court.

In the 57 cases already settled, Phelps had demanded a total of
$75,200.00--but then taken an average of only $1,500 per case to walk
away. Litigation would have cost his adversaries far more.

It was naked extortion, nothing more.

Phil Harley, the Assistant Attorney General who led the investigation, now
an attorney in San Francisco, confirmed to the Capital-Journal a statement
he made to the press 10 years ago: "Based on my experience with him, I
reached the personal conclusion that Mr. Phelps used the legal system to
coerce settlements and abuse other people."

In an opinion filed in a 1979 civil rights case, Federal Judge Richard
Rogers--no stranger to the pastor's ways, a significant portion of his
docket was taken up by Fred's lawsuits--supported Harley's conclusions:

"I feel Mr. Phelps files 'strike suits' of little merit in the expectation
of securing settlements by defendants anxious to avoid the inconvenience
and expense of litigation."

In fact, when those sued by Phelps did not blink, but forced him into
court, the angry pastor lost 75 percent of the time--an astonishing record
that explodes the myth of the invincible Fred Phelps, a myth which
intimidates his community even today.

On November 8, 1977, the state filed a complaint seeking to have Phelps
disbarred in its courts.

The complaint centered on the pastor's behavior in a lawsuit filed against
Carolene Brady, a court reporter in Shawnee County District Court. Phelps
sought $2,000 in actual damages and $20,000 punitive damages, alleging
Brady had failed to have a court transcript ready when he'd asked for it.

According to court documents, prior to filing the lawsuit, Phelps
allegedly told Brady "he had wanted to sue her for a long time".

During the trial, the pastor called Brady to the stand, had her declared a
hostile witness, and cross-examined her for several days. Phelps not only
attacked Brady's competence and honesty, he also attempted to introduce
testimony about her sex life.

The Kansas Supreme Court would later observe: "The trial became an
exhibition of a personal vendetta by Phelps against Carolene Brady. His
examination was replete with repetition, badgering, innuendo,
belligerence, irrelevant and immaterial matter, evidencing only a desire
to hurt and destroy the defendant."

The Supreme Court went on to comment, after the jury had found for Brady
and Phelps sought a new trial: "The jury verdict didn't stop the onslaught
of Phelps. He was not satisfied with the hurt, pain, and damage he had
visited on Carolene Brady."

In asking for a new trial, Phelps prepared affidavits swearing to the
court he had new witnesses whose testimony would weigh in dramatically on
his side. Brady obtained affidavits from eight of those witnesses, showing
they would not testify as the pastor had claimed, that, in fact, Phelps
had lied to the court.

The formal complaint against Phelps would not be for harassing Brady, but
that he had "clearly misrepresented the truth to the court".

Phil Harley, the same Assistant Attorney General who had investigated
Phelps in 1976, represented the state in the 1979 disbarment proceedings.
Harley wrote:

"When the attorneys engage in conduct such as Phelps has done, they do
serious injury to the workings of our judicial system. Even the lay person
could see how serious Phelps' infractions are. To allow this type of
conduct to go essentially unpunished is being disrespectful to our entire
judicial system. It confirms the layman's suspicion that attorneys are
'above the law' and can do anything they please with impunity."

Harley continued: "Phelps has now been given two chances to show that he
is capable of conducting himself in a manner that is expected of an
attorney. On both occasions, he has flagrantly violated the oath he swore
to uphold. He should not be given a third opportunity to harm the public
or the judicial system. Fred W. Phelps should be disbarred."

The Kansas Supreme Court agreed, adding: "The seriousness of the present
case, coupled with his previous record, leads this court to the conclusion
that respondent has little regard for the ethics of his profession."

The date was July 20, 1979.

Even so, the vindictive pastor would have his revenge cold, however small
the portion: When Mark Bennett, the attorney chairing the state grievance
committee originally recommending Phelps be disbarred died, the aggrieved
Fred came to the wake and signed the guestbook. Beside his name, Phelps
wrote the numbers of a chapter and verse from the Bible.

When the shattered widow looked it up, it said 'vengeance is mine'.

Based on his state court disbarment, Phelps was banned from practicing law
in federal courts from October, 1980 until October, 1982.

Amazingly, the pastor was back in trouble almost immediately following his
return. Demand letters sent in 1983 to people Phelps planned to sue
brought him right back up for disciplinary charges in federal court.

Initiated by Wichita lawyer Robert Howard, the complaint charged that
Phelps sent letters to businesses and individuals he intended to sue,
informing them of litigation unless they paid money to the pastor's
client.

Called before a panel of three federal judges barely two years after he
had returned to the law, nonetheless Fred and his family of flyspeckers
had been busy: Phelps Chartered had almost 200 lawsuits pending in the
U.S. courts.

In one, the pastor was suing Ronald Reagan for appointing an ambassador to
the Vatican. In others, he was demanding an injunction against moments of
silence in schools; suing a local teacher who had criticized the doctrine
of predestination' and asking $5,000,000 in damages for libel from the
Wichita Eagle-Beacon for the story it ran in 1983.

All of these suits would come to nothing.

The sheer number of cases generated out of Phelps Chartered, and the
family's genius for antagonization set the stage for the next conflict:
Fred on the deserted platform, waiting to stare down the federal judges
arriving on the noon train.

Too late, Phelps would learn that, in a staring contest with a federal
judge, one should be a fish if they expect him to blink first. The hard
lesson would soon take the 'esquire' out of the irascible pastor.

Of the five active federal judges in Kansas, two of them, Earl O'Connor of
Kansas City and Patrick Kelly of Wichita, had already voluntarily removed
themselves from hearing any cases involving Phelps Chartered. Lawyers from
the family had filed motions accusing them of racial prejudice, religious
prejudice, and conspiring to violate the civil rights of the seven Phelps
attorneys.

At first, the judges were only too happy to comply: they were as eager to
be rid of the Phelps brand of tawdry courtroom hysteria as the pastor and
company wanted to be done with them. Kelly, in fact, even told the pastor
"good riddance" to his face during a special hearing the judge had called
to upbraid Phelps--a hearing for which Kelly would later be reprimanded.

Believing he had intimidated them, Fred made his fatal, final mistake as
the bad boy of the Kansas courts: he went for a third judge.

The pastor publicly accused Richard Rogers of the U.S. District Court in
Topeka of racial prejudice, dislike of civil rights cases, engaging in a
racially motivated vendetta against the seven Phelpses, and conspiring
against them with Judge O'Connor.

Rogers counter-charged the Phelpses had launched a campaign to disqualify
him from hearing Phelps litigation in an attempt to go 'judge shopping'.

Even if Rogers had wanted to remove himself, his hands were tied. Almost
90 of those 200 lawsuits generated by Phelps Chartered had been assigned
to Rogers; court--approximately one-fifth of his entire caseload. If
Rogers bowed out, it would leave only two federal judges, Dale Saffels of
Kansas City and Sam Crow of Wichita, to handle the swarm of 200 Phelps
suits, as well as their dockets from the rest of the state.

"I'll grant you it creates a logistics problem," admitted Margie Phelps at
the time, "but I didn't create the problem. If it takes going to the other
end of the United States...to get another judge and bring him in to hear
our cases, that's what the law requires."

When Rogers refused to acquiesce to the pastor's demands, Phelps began a
campaign of innuendo and wild accusations that Topekans today will
recognize as pure Fred. An article in the Capital-Journal, January 16 of
1986, describes this early forerunner of the Phelps' fax campaign:

"The judge has disputed affidavits filed by Phelps clients who say he has
made derogatory comments about the Phelpses at the Topeka County Club, the
YMCA, in an elevator at the First National Bank, and at a judicial
conference last September in Tulsa.

"For example, the Phelpses accuse Rogers of telling Chris Davis, a Topeka
man who attended the Tulsa conference, "You had better not plan on
practicing law with the Phelps firm in my court, because I intend putting
them out of business before much longer'.

"They also quote an affidavit given by Brent Roper, a Topeka man who said
Rogers became angry at the conference banquet when a band leader drew
attention to the Phelps attorneys. Rogers is said to 'stalked from the
ballroom', saying, 'Those --- --- Phelpses, they're everywhere showing
off,' and 'It will be harder now, but I will destroy them.'"

The irony here is that both 'Topeka' men quoted as apparent uninvolved
bystanders were, in fact, Fred Phelps' sons-in-laws, or soon to be.

Chris Davis was one of two families, the Hockenbargers and the Davises,
that remained in the Westboro Church. He married the seventh Phelps child,
Rebekah, in 1991.

The other "Topeka man", Brent Roper, joined the Westboro community as a
homeless teenager, was put through law school by the pastor, and married
Shirley Phelps.

The image of a federal judge stalking from a ballroom uttering darkly, "it
will be harder now, but I will destroy them," it seems, on its face, a
rather amateurish dip in slander. These are lines from the movies, from a
Lex Luthor, and not a Richard Rogers.

It is noteworthy here to mention that Roper is also the author of a
privately published book that argues AIDS was first introduced to the
United States by Truman Capote, following a book promotion in South
Africa. According to Roper, both JFK and Marilyn Monroe contracted the
disease simultaneously from Capote during a touch football game in the
White House Rose Garden. The CIA was forced to kill the fab couple, he
says, to keep them from spreading the deadly virus to the rest of the
nation.

Copies may be difficult to find.

After Rogers remained stubborn despite the slanderous attacks, he claimed
the Phelpses threatened to sue him on behalf of a client Rogers didn't
know.

It was not an empty threat. In August, 1985, the pastor Phelps and his
daughter, Margie, had brought a suit against Judge O'Connor on behalf of a
former federal probation officer. Though the man had been removed from his
position by a vote of the full court of federal judges, the suit named
O'Connor. At the time, O'Connor was under pressure from the Phelpses to
disqualify himself (and did) from a 30-judge panel that would rule on the
pastor's 1983 demand letters.

The family Phelps had started a shooting war in the wrong neighborhood.

On December 16, 1985, a complaint signed by every federal judge in Kansas
was lodged against the Phelps lawyers. It called for the disbarment of the
seven family attorneys--Fred, Fred, Jr., Jonathon, Margie, Shirley,
Elizabeth, and Fred's daughter-in-law, Betty, and the revocation of their
corporate charter.

The 9 angry judges accused the Phelpses of asserting "claims and positions
lacking any grounding in fact", making "false and intemperate accusations"
against the judges, and undertaking a "vicious pattern of intimidation"
against the court.

"Time and time again," says Mark Phelps, "I can remember something would
happen in the way of actions or lawsuits being filed against him or one of
his clients. He would fume and cuss and strain and spew and carry on.
Then, he would come up with his plan of attack.

"He'd get real excited after his deep depression, and he'd carry on around
the law office crowing about the cunning, brilliant strategy he had come
up with. He'd put it into action, and he'd just thrill over it.

"He'd say: 'Do we know how to deal with these types? You bet we do. We
goin' to sue the pants off of them. We goin' to slap them with the fattest
lawsuit they ever did see. We goin' to frizzle they fricuss and burn all
the lent right out of they navel. When they get this, they goin' think
twice about messin' with ol' Fred Phelps.'

"He'd have a ball thinking about how he was going to get even--and even
better than even--and then he'd go into action.

"Next thing you knew, they'd respond with some action. And I guess he
always thought they'd be like his won family--willing to take anything he
dished out. I guess he just naturally expects people to roll over and play
dead. So, when they'd come back with a logical, predictable response to
his behavior, he'd go crazy:

"'These heathen! These Sons of Belial! These enemies of God and His
Church! God's gonna get them! He won't let them (get) by with this!'

"My father would complain and yell at God, and throw a fit at Mom, and
carry on at the kids."

In September of 1987, the federal judicial panel investigating the demand
letters sent by Phelps found evidence to sustain two of the four charges
against him.

The pastor had been accused of demanding money and other relief for claims
he knew to be false. The panel of judges issued a public censure of him.

In layman's terms, Pastor Phelps had attempted to strong-arm money from
the innocent and been caught.

And, come high noon, there would be one less Phelps at the bar.

When the nine judges first entered their complaint in 1985, Margie, the
spokeswoman and courtroom representative for the family in the matter,
said: "The bottom line is we will fight every charge, every way."

But, upon hearing the extent of the evidence collected against them, the
Phelpses asked the judges and investigator to find a way to end the case
without resorting to litigation.

They agreed to the punishment specified in the consent order. Margie
signed the order, acknowledging her family accepted it voluntarily and
waived any right to appeal.

The resulting compromise singled out those who, according to the
investigator, were the three worst offenders: Fred, Jr. was suspended six
months from practicing in federal courts. Margie received a one-year
suspension, in part because she had maliciously misrepresented a
conversation she'd had with Judge O'Connor.

Having been suspended from the state courts for cheating his clients, and
then barred from them for lying to a trial judge, having been censured in
federal courts for pursuing claims he knew to be false, the angry pastor
was now barred from them forever because he had lied about the judges in
an attempt to impugn the integrity of the court.

The leopard may be older, but it still has its spots.

The federal disbarment deprived Fred Phelps of his last arena of legal
abuse. Unless he could find a new outlet for his hate, the defrocked
esquire from Mississippi was now just an angry eccentric, no lawyer, not
even a pastor--except in the fear-conditioned eyes of his family.

Nonetheless, Fred Phelps has always held that all the bad things happened
in his law career because he was a tireless Christian soldier, battling
for black civil rights. A careful examination of his more salient cases,
however, reveals once again how, with such odd regularity, some men of the
cloth seem to confuse community service with lip and self-service.

The hallmark of a devoted civil rights reformer who is also a lawyer ought
to be a record of court decisions that, taken together, create legal
precedents influencing future cases and, therefore, future society.

Sadly, close inspection of Phelps' civil rights record shows he followed
the same greedy star he did in the rest of his cases.

Lawsuits were filed, but rarely went to trial--and even more rarely
reached a decision. Instead, Phelps practiced what he always had:
'take-the-money-and run'.

A settlement out-of-court has zero impact on legal precedent. Both sides
continue to maintain they were right, only one party pays the other a
little money to shut up and go away.

In what are probably Fred Phelps' three most famous civil rights cases, he
did exactly that each time.

In the multi-million dollar Kansas Power and Light case, Phelps filed a
class-action on behalf of 2,000 blacks who had accused the utility of
discrimination in their hiring and promotion practices.

Fred settled out of court for the following:

*Two black employees received $12,000 each.

*$100,000 was paid out to the other plaintiffs. If one counts the
original 2,000, that made for 50 bucks each.

*Phelps scooped $85,000 in attorney's fees and expenses.

*KP&L admitted no wrongdoing and suffered no coercion to alter its
allegedly racist policies. KP&L officials claimed they'd settled to avoid
an expensive legal battle.

"It's unprecedented what we just did," the pastor crowed.

Certainly it left no precedent.

In the American Legion suit, which stemmed from a police raid on a Topeka
post with a largely black membership, again Phelps settled for small cash
outside of court.

Perhaps his most publicized case was the Evelyn Johnson suit, touted as
son of Brown vs. Board of Education, the landmark school desegregation
case filed against another Topeka USD 501 school in 1955. Brown vs. Board
of Education, along with the Selma bus case, became the basis for the
civil rights movement in the sixties.

In 1973, Evelyn Johnson's aunt and legal guardian, Marlene Miller, sue the
Unified School District, number 501, a state entity which contained the
Topeka area public schools.

Miller, represented by Fred Phelps, claimed the district had failed to
comply with the ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education. It had not
provided the same educational opportunities and environments to the black
neighborhoods as it had to the white areas of the city.

Phelps boosted Miller's complaint into a 200 million dollar class action
suit.

When that was tossed out, he pressed on with the individual action on
behalf of Mrs. Johnson. In 1979, the pastor agreed to settle out of court
with the district's insurance company.

Phelps accepted the company's condition the settlement be sealed from
public scrutiny to discourage others who might have been inclined to sue
for the same reasons. Hardly the act of a hard-knuckled civil rights
reformer.

When the contents of the settlement were revealed later, it turned out the
pastor had collected $19,500 from the insurance company--$10,600 himself,
and $8,900 in a trust for Johnson.

If the attorneys for Brown had settled for cash outside the courtroom
instead of a decision, there would have been no legal grounds for the
federal government to pressure a segregated America to conform to the new
social standards, and quite possibly no civil rights movement.

In light of that, it is difficult to understand how $8,900 in trust to a
15 year-old, uneducated girl was going to remedy either her or her
school-mates' problem. After the settlement, Evelyn Johnson attended
Topeka High School, rated one of the best in the nation. She performed
poorly and dropped out without graduating.

Certainly her life and prospects, and those of her peers, remained
generally unchanged by the out of court pay-off. Since no ruling was made
and no precedent established to reinforce Brown vs. Board of Education,
nothing came from six years of Phelps' litigation except $10,600 for
himself and a reputation, however undeserved, as a civil rights hero.

In other instances, the issue of civil rights was so flimsily connected,
and the case so absurd, that any serious interest in social change on
Phelps' part has to be questioned:

In 1979, the pastor sued Stauffer Communications, owner of WIBW-TV, for
over $1,000,000 on behalf of a 23 year-old black man, Jetson Booth, who
had appeared in footage aired by the station. Booth was shown surrounded
by police during camera coverage of a shoot-out involving the officers and
two unidentified men.

"If plaintiff had been a white man, defendants (WIBW-TV) would not have
treated him in this fashion," Phelps asserted in the suit.

The case was dismissed for lack of cause shown.

In 1985, Phelps Chartered was order to pay attorney's fees amounting to
$7,800 for police officer Dean Forster after the firm had sued him for
civil rights violations of a client.

It turned out Forster had no connection to the incident in question, and,
furthermore, the Phelps lawyers had known that from the beginning of their
litigation.

In an astonishing number of his cases, it would seem the pastor thought
'civil rights' was an open sesame to the good life--for himself.

In 1979, Phelps was sued by a Wichita law firm that claimed he had
"tortiously interfered in the lawyer-client relationship". Three black
women and two of their children had been grievously injured in an auto
accident. One of the women was in a coma for years.

Allegedly, Pastor Phelps learned about the case through local black
ministers. He also somehow discovered that the liable insurance company's
coverage was not the $100,000 they were claiming--but 1.1 million, of
which the lucky attorney representing the victims would scoop up 35
percent.

The aggrieved law firm protested Phelps had wooed the clients with his
erstwhile reputation as a civil rights advocate. Because of his
interference, they asserted, the goose of the golden eggs had fired its
midwife attorneys and taken their 35 percent to Phelps Chartered.

Phelps responded the other law firm was "all white", and that, in part,
they'd lost their clients because of their "racially biased and
overbearing treatment of said black people."

In the final settlement, however, the judge awarded $644,000 to the victim
and $366,000 to the lawyers--of which only $122,000 went to Fred.
Disappointing work for one who'd chased his ambulance with such laudable
ethnic sensitivity.

Probably the most bizarre and ludicrous example of Fred Phelps exploiting
the title of 'civil rights crusader' was in 1983, when three of his
children failed to make the cut for Washburn School of Law.

The pastor filed suit in federal court on behalf of Tim, Kathy, and
Rebekah, claiming his children should be granted minority status because
of his civil rights work. Furthermore, Phelps argued, Washburn Law's
record on affirmative action was inadequate. They needed to accept more
blacks into their freshman class each year.

"It is important to note this case is brought by white applicants who are
asking to be treated as blacks," observed Carl Monk, dean of the law
school. "They would not be asking to be treated as blacks unless they felt
such treatment would help them."

That case was still in court the following year when Washburn allowed
Timothy in but again denied admission to Kathy and Rebekah.

The reverend filed suit once more, but this time with a twist. In the
second suit, he offered his children were the victims of reverse
discrimination because they were white. He complained the law school had
admitted blacks in 1984 who were far less qualified than his own
offspring.

So much for the family commitment to affirmative action.

U.S. District Judge, Frank Theis, was not amused. Ruling on the 1983 case,
he stated first that, "the plaintiffs simply were not qualified for
admission to law school," and second, that the new 1984 case weakened the
case before him from 1983. The judge told Phelps he could not argue the
school discriminated against blacks, and then sue again, saying it
preferred blacks over whites, and be taken seriously.

Katherine and Rebekah eventually got their law degrees down at Oklahoma
City University. Phelps Chartered got spanked with a $55,000 assessment by
the court to pay Washburn's attorneys' fees. It was negotiated down, and
Pastor Fred signed the check over at $12,000 in restitution for bringing a
'frivolous suit of no merit' against the college.

In Phelps' eyes, it had been another blow against empire for the bold
pastor.

There is an interesting sidebar to this story. When the Phelps children
were first turned down by Washburn in 1983, they appealed to the law
school's internal grievance committee. It found no race-based
discrimination in the rejection of the three Phelps.

However, one of the panel members, Karl Hockenbarger, a Washburn
University employee, filed a dissent, stating it was clear to him the
three had been "denied admission to the law school because of their
identification with Fred Phelps Sr., and the cause of civil rights for
blacks." Hockenbarger went on to add: "Blacks in Kansas generally depend
on the Phelps family and firm as their last and best hope for attaining
equal justice."

He is, of course, the same Karl Hockenbarger who daily pickets with the
Phelpses, and one of the few non-family members who still attends the
pastor's church at Westboro.

Mr. Hockenbarger's shared concern with his pastor for the plight of Kansas
blacks may not be as deep as it appears: Police surveillance of the
Westboro community has allegedly tied Hockenbarger to white supremacist
groups like the Posse Comitatus and the Ku Klux Klan.

"Civil rights lawsuits presented a vast opportunity to make money back
then," says Nate Phelps. "My father used to say he had a huge target and
all he had to do was shoot. I don't blame him for choosing a lucrative
area of the law, it's just that he was not motivated by some noble,
altruistic desire "to champion the case of the downtrodden."

Asked if he filed "nuisance lawsuits" once, Pastor Phelps replied: "They
think it's a nuisance if you call a black man a nigger. That's just
trivial to them, bit it's not trivial to him, and it's not trivial to his
children."

During their teenage years, both Mark and Nate worked as law clerks in
their father's office. "When a black client was in there," recalls Nate,
"my father would play the 'DN' game with us. It stands for 'dumb nigger'.
We would all try to use the acronym as often as possible in the presence
of the person involved."

In the 1983 interview with the Wichita Eagle-Beacon, Phelps intoned,
echoing Abraham Lincoln:

"The air of the United States is too pure for racial prejudice to keep
going, and the nation can't long endure half-slave and half-free. There is
not any doubt that the problems of this country derive, in my humble
opinion, from the way this country continues to treat black people."

But according to his sons in California, part of the theology of the Old
Calvinism Fred taught held that blacks were a subservient race because
they were the sons of Ham, the son of Noah.

Cursed for ridiculing Noah's nakedness, Ham's children were born black,
according to the Bible. Some scholars attribute apartheid in South Africa
to the fact that the white minority is predominantly Calvinist and takes
the Ham story to heart.

Mark definitely recalls that his father taught the Ham story and took it
to its Calvinist conclusions: the black race was cursed and meant to be
the "servants of servants" -- i.e., subservient to whites.

Nate agrees. "He taught that in Sunday sermon many times while we were
growing up."

Both boys recall their father used to tell black jokes.

"And he'd imitate them after they'd left our office," remembers Mark.

However, the piece-de-resistance in the ongoing saga of Phelps hypocrisy
is the pastor's relationship with the Reverend Pete Peters of La Porte,
Colorado.

Peters is the guru-philosopher of the Christian Identity Movement. Known
simply as "Identity", the movement believes the white race is God's true
Chosen People. They assert the Jews are animal souls that rewrote the Old
Testament to give themselves the Chosen's birthright. Blacks are "mud
people" who also possess animal souls--meaning they are not immortal and
cannot go to heaven. According to Identity, blacks and Jews want to
eliminate the white race and rule the earth.

Randy Weaver, the man arrested in the Idaho mountaintop shout-out with
F.B.I., was a member of the Posse Comitatus and a follower of Identity.

Peters broadcasts his shortwave radio program, "Scriptures for America",
around the world, calling for death to homosexuals and warning against the
international Jewish conspiracy.

Fred Phelps has done broadcasts on "Scriptures for America", and tapes of
his anti-gay message and offered for sale in Peters' mail order
catalogues.

When asked about it, Pastor Phelps only smiles enigmatically and offers
that Pete Peters owns the rights to those broadcasts and can sell them if
he wants.

But Peters, reached by phone at his church in La Porte, says: "If he (Fred
Phelps) didn't want them out, even if I had a right, I wouldn't put them
out. I have the greatest respect for him." The militant white supremacist
then adds ominously, "He's got the support of god-fearing people across
this country that are not afraid to back a man who tells it like it is.

"And he's got my support if he needs help--whenever he needs help."

Not empty words.

Though Peters himself was cleared, it is still widely believed by
Klanwatch and other groups monitoring extremist activity that the
right-wing hit team that killed Alan Berg, the Denver talk radio host,
came from or were associated with Peters' congregation.

Reverend Fred Phelps, friend of the struggling black?

Listed next to one of Fred's tapes in Pete Peters' catalogue is one by
Jack Mohr, a man who describes himself as the "Brigadier General of the
Christian Patriot Defense League", but whom the F.B.I. has identified as a
weapons instructor for the Ku Klux Klan.

Why in the world would a person with these associations proclaim himself a
civil rights' crusader?

In the words of 'Deep Throat', "follow the money."

And in those of Richard Seaton, the Assistant Attorney General who led the
first attempt to disbar Phelps back in 1969, the pastor had "an
uncontrollable appetite for money--especially the money of his
clients."

CHAPTER SEVEN

"Nightmare of Twelfth Street"

"Since no one else would join, my father sired us for congregations,"
observes Mark. "We were the only members because we had no choice. When we
got old enough to make our own decisions, choose our life's work, and our
life's mates, did you think he'd permit that?

"Without his children, my father had no church and he has no income."

Fred Phelps' bizarre behavior toward his children as struggled to become
adults is as disturbing as it is revealing.

Growing up in the pastor's family meant going from door-to-door sales,
domestics, and wage earners to lawyers and tithe payers. To Phelps,
adulthood for his children meant soldiers for his wars.

To accomplish this, he would attempt to arrest and redirect each child's
path to fulfillment. They were not to leave his nest, nor learn to fly:

"The Bible may say you're gonna be the head of your house. But I'm tellin'
you right now, goddammit, that ain't gonna happen! I'm gonna be the head
of your house! And you better start gettin' that through your head right
now!"

Mark pauses at the memory. "You know, he couldn't say, I desperately need
you; please don't leave me." His heart was too closed off by some
devastating unknown injury, and his mind was so sophisticated, so
intelligent, he could weave a steel cape around us we couldn't get out of.
It was emotional. And it was the use of religion."

But how could Fred Phelps maintain control of the lives and dreams of his
children?

Against his desire for a family that would be an extension of himself were
arrayed some formidable forces: the adolescent's yearning for independence
was one; the pull of hormones and the heart of another. In addition, the
harshness of the children's upbringing left them with little genuine
respect or love for their father.

Then what wrought such conformity? Two obstacles, both too high for 9 of
the 13 to surmount. They are the twin secrets of Pastor Phelps' sway over
his troubled flock.

First, and most important, while they may not be overly enthusiastic about
his job as a father, the Phelps' children still accept, respect, and obey
him as the head of their church. Since, in their belief, the Elect may
reach heaven only through the portal of The Place, he who runs The Place
holds the keys to the gates of Paradise.

The children weren't afraid to disobey or argue with their father when, in
later adolescence, they didn't seize the hand beating them or leave the
place holding them. Rather, they were terrified to oppose the will of
heaven's gatekeeper and imperil their souls. Literally, to was the fires
of hell and not the mattock whose heat they felt in all their choices.

"My father established early on the expectations of each child in the
family for their entire life," says Nate, "and the consequences if those
expectations weren't met. According to him, each of us would finish
college, get lour law degree, work for him, and marry whom he chose, when
he chose.

By no means were we allowed to leave that situation, or it would be seen
as 'abandoning the church'. If we did that, we'd be excommunicated."

Besides being groomed as lawyers, Mark says he and his siblings were
constantly told they were different.

"We were taught we were abnormal from the time we were able to learn," he
says. "That the rest of the world out there was evil. That we The Place.
And inside The Place, people were good and going to heaven.

"Outside The Place they were all damned and going to hell. And, if that
other world ever got us down, we were taught to find strength by imagining
the terrible horrors that would happen soon to everyone outside The
Place."

'The Place' was how his father referred to the church, add Nate. "If you
left, you were forsaking the assembly and you were delivered to Satan for
the destruction of the flesh. He had his repertoire down.

"Of course, he justified it by manipulating various passages in the Bible.

"One passage refers to a child 'leaving his father and mother and cleaving
to his wife'. He interpreted this to mean a child was not to leave his
parents until he was married. But, since he decided who and when we were
to marry, he controlled this.

"Another passage mentions 'not forsaking the assembling of yourselves
together'. Since he had long ago established in our minds that his church
was where the Elect came to assemble, that it was 'The Place', he could
lead us easily to the belief that to leave home was to 'leave' the company
of the Elect, to join the innumerable multitude of the damned."

And the second of the twin secrets?

"To cast the world beyond The Place as evil and fatal to the soul. Then
manipulate the local community so they would react with hostility and
aggression whenever a kid would venture out. It's why my father insisted
we go to public school, you know. Thanks to him, we were hated before we
even got there on Day One. And people were so mean to us, that, when we
came home, Fred could say, 'See, I told you so. They're evil and
reprobate. They're not like us.'"

The family does not believe in Christmas, states the Pastor Phelps,
because there is no mention of it in the Bible; nowhere does it say Jesus
Christ was born on December 25. (The date for many Christian holidays, in
fact, derive from pre-Christian Europe: Christmas from the winter solstice
on December 21; Easter from the vernal equinox on March 21; All Souls for
Halloween from the Feast of the Samhain or the Day of the Dead, on October
31.)

While accurate, if somewhat unnecessary theology (since Christmas in
America is really a shopping, not a religious, holiday), as sociology,
Fred's 'bah-humbug' to the season of comfort and joy did significantly add
to the burden of 'otherness' that caused the world outside to repel his
children and grandchildren back to The Place.

"From kindergarten, we were not allowed to stay in the classroom if there
were Christmas activities going on,: says Nate. "We always had to go to
another room, usually the library. My father threatened to sue the schools
if they did not remove us during those times."

The man pauses, remembering the sorrows of the boy: "Our humiliation was
constant."

Even so, from suing the schools to shooting his neighbor's dog, Fred
Phelps' personal and litigious behavior would have ensured his children a
cool reception in their community--without an encore as the pastor who
stole Christmas.

"We weren't allowed to participate in any activities at school," adds
Nate. "Not through most of our childhoods."

"No sports, not even track," says Mark. "Until my senior year.

"And no outside friends. No one was allowed to visit, and we weren't
allowed to go anywhere. To birthday parties or anything. Then, shave our
heads. My father wanted the world to reject us. It would drive us right
back to him. To the Place. The world-within-a-world. The one that was
Fredcentric."

Spouses were not welcome in such a world--except as a last resort to hold
the child. There were to be no girls for the boys. And no boys for the
girls.

"If my dad had his way," confesses Shirley, "none of us would have gotten
married. He'd just as soon keep everyone away, thanks."

"Kathy's was my father's favorite," remembers Margie. "She had blue eyes
and dark hair. She was very pretty and he would spoil her. He used to
bounce her on his knee and sing 'The Yellow Rose of Texas' to her. But
after she was about 15 or 16, they had nothing to say to each other. She'd
be home, but she kept her distance from him.

"And she was a bitch throughout her teen years. She was very mean to the
rest of the kids. Kathy became very self-destructive back then, and she's
stayed that way since."

Concludes Margie: "I never understood why."

Perhaps her brothers on the West Coast have a clue: "Then came a time when
suddenly Kathy got in my dad's doghouse," relates Mark. "A boy had called
once or something. From that time on, he commenced to beating her, and he
stayed on her and stayed on her rear end that wouldn't l; because of how
often and how severely she got beat.

"He'd beat her routinely in the church, against the foundation pole. He'd
beat her with mattock and then twist her arm behind her back. She'd be
screaming--bloodcurdling screams--and all because someone had called her
up on the telephone.

"Later, it got so if the phone rang and they hung up, he'd assume it was a
boy looking for Kathy, and that she was 'doing' him, and then she'd get
beaten for that.

"And, on top of that, she and Nate were getting beaten several times a
week for their weight.

"Later, when Mark and Fred were in college," says Nate, "Mom would take
everyone out to sell candy, but she'd leave Kathy home alone with Fred.
She'd get beaten during those times, just like I had."

Kathy tried to escape the nightmare called 'home' at the Westboro Baptist
Church at least three times between the age of 17 and 18.

Each time, the pastor found out where she was living and led a Phelps'
quick-reaction team to literally snatch her away from her life and bring
her back.

In one incident, Kathy was living in a quiet Topeka neighborhood and
dating a boy Mark knew from high school:

"It was the summertime, about 6:30 in the evening," Nate recalls. "Her
boyfriend pulled in to pick her up on a date. We'd been waiting for her to
come out of the house, and when she did, we just swooped in. We had two
cars. Mark was driving one and my dad the other. It was real 'Starsky and
Hutch'. We blocked off the departing vehicle, and pulled her out of the
car while her date just sat there stunned."

"At home my father beat her terribly," says Mark. "It was then she was
locked in her room for 40 days on nothing but water."

Mark remembers one of the 'parental intercessions' was actually a
kidnapping: Kathy was 18 when it occurred.

Though she eventually finished college and graduated law school, according
to some of her siblings, Kathy has yet to find resolution to her anger and
self-destruction. In recent years, she has allowed her active status at
the bar to lapse, waitressed at Topeka's Ramada Inn, been laid off, gone
of public assistance, and been convicted on passing bad checks.

"My sister, Kathy...," reflects Mark, "...everything my father's done to
her...she's just been so deeply hurt as a human being, I don't think she
can cope out there..."

Nate has one memory that sticks in his mind.

Once, while she was going to college and living in the compound, Kathy
went jogging late one night, as was her habit. But, this time, the sight
of a woman running through a darkened residential neighborhood after 1
a.m. caught the attention of a patrol car. When the officer tried to
question her from the rolling vehicle, Kathy turned and ran the other way.
When he overtook her on foot, humped ahead of her and tried to block her
passage, she kept on him like a wild animal. Other officers were called
and Kathy fought them with the same grim ferocity.

She was finally subdued and arrested. When the case went to court, Nate
was there:

"The judge asked why she fought when the officer tried to stop her. She
turned to him--and I was shocked by how hate was in her face--and she
almost spit out the words: 'I can't stand for a man to touch me!'"

Continues Nate: "That face full of hate I'll never forget. My sister was
very, very angry about something."

In high school, says Mark, "I couldn't grasp the concept of career day."

The only one he and his brothers and sisters were told they could consider
was the law. Says the pastor with a groan: "Hell, I think everybody today
should have a law degree. You need one to defend yourself. Yeh, got to
have one now or you can't take care of yourself or family."

Adds Mark: "His attitude was always that school was bullshit, but you had
to get As and get out so you could have the law degree. With that you
could support and defend the church.

"To say 'no' would have been the same as drafting-dodging during WWII: it
was every kid's duty to enlist in the bar and protect our homeland against
the evil that threatened from without,"

But Fred Jr. wanted to be a history teacher.

"Ever since he'd been a kid, he wanted to do that," Mark says. "At
Washburn he was a masterful history student. He wanted to teach it, and he
held on to that. He'd say: 'I have that right', and my dad would try to
beat it out of him. My father would make it clear to Fred Jr. that he
wasn't going to teach history. He'd yell: 'You guys are mine and you're
never gonna leave me!'"

"Then always follow with: 'And you better start gettin' it through your
head right now!'

"I can remember my father beating Fred when he was 19 or 20 about that. I
couldn't believe my brother would even try to argue with him! My father
wouldn't hear of it. Fred Jr. was going to be a lawyer.

"Eventually, I think, my brother's spirit was broken and he became one.
But it wasn't the beatings that caused him to lose heart--it was Debbie
Valgos."

What follows may be the saddest tale found during this investigation. It
is a profound and tragic example of the fruits of hatred when it is
directed by the angry against the innocent.

Says Mark: "He was deeply in love with her, a girl from St. Vincent's
Orphanage several blocks from our house. They were just crazy in love...

"She was a free spirit. And a great looker. Noisy. Loud, hearty laugh. She
was very warm, and friendly, and loving."

"She was cute, thin, blonde, and sexy," laughs Nate.

"That name...," sighs one of the nuns from the orphanage, "is like a punch
in the stomach..."

Debbie was not an orphan. She lived with her mother, Della A., and her
stepfather, Paul A., on Lincoln Street in Topeka.

When she was 11 years old, for reasons undisclosed, Debbie was placed in
St. Vincent's. She went to Capper Junior High and later attended Topeka
West High School.

When she was 14, Debbie sent this poem to her mom:

I settled down west from town,
though no one knew I was a clown,
My face was clean, and all around
were children, though I heard no sound.

She signed it, 'Mom, I love you very much!' with seven asterisks for
emphasis.

Bernadette, an older sister who still lives in town recalls: "She sang.
She had a beautiful voice. And she played the guitar. She was a pretty
little thing."

Debbie's mom has an album of photos taken by the nuns of her daughter
while she lived at the orphanage. Pictures of her as a cheerleader at
Capper; smiling on a dock at the Lake of the Ozarks with some other girls
from St. Vincent's; clutching her pom-poms, watching the players; pictures
of her 15th birthday party at the orphanage.

They met at the skating rink.

Sometimes Fred and Mark would trick their father. When he thought they'd
gone out on their obligatory 10 mile run, instead they'd go skating. Or if
they'd had a good night on candy sales, Jonathon, Nate, Mark, and Fred
would knock off early and hit the rink before going home.

"Debbie was a good skater," remembers Mark. "She came to the rink with
other kids from the orphanage. She skated fast and reckless."

The voice over the phone sounds as if it's smiling at the memory.

"At first my brother saw her secretly, during stolen moments. Then he'd go
by the orphanage when the four of us boys were out selling candy."

Mark stops.

"You should know, when I was 9 and Fred 10, we began to hear degrading,
insulting sermons from my father about how no good it is for boys to have
girl friends: "You'll meet a girl someday and she'll start saying things
like, "Aren't you cute; aren't you handsome; ooooooh, you're really
something", and like some kind of ignorant, stupid lamb being led to
slaughter, you'll fall for it, and the next thing you know, she'll want to
kiss you or some bullshit like that. I'm telling you now, I'm not going to
put up with it. If you think you're going to have some whore coming around
sniffing after you, you better know right now that I'm not going to put up
with it. You better start gettin' it through your head right now. You just
have to trust the Lord to provide you a good woman who will subject
herself to the authority of the church...'"

Mark clears his throat. "They met, I think, in the fall of 1970. On the
candy sales, Fred would drive and I'd ride shotgun, with Jon and Nate in
back. We'd pick Debbie up on the way out and she'd sit between us.

"When we got there, the rest of us would sell candy, and Fred and Debbie
would stay behind in the car.

"Boy, did they kiss. Every time was for the last time. Like Bogart and
Bergman at the Paris train station.

"She was cute, but it wasn't only sexual. Those two were very, very much
in love. I was there. I saw it. I watched them together--kissing, walking,
being together. Fred and I shared the same bedroom and I knew my brother.

"It was obvious they were meant for each other. That romance had so much
voltage, it could have lit the city."

Fred and Debbie's special song was "Close to You", by the Carpenters, but
that didn't keep them from fighting. Says Mark: "Debbie had a hot temper.
She was very intense and dramatic. So they kissed and fought, kissed and
fought. But they loved each other terribly hard--none of us doubted that."

Debbie also got a kick out of hanging around with all of Fred's brothers,
remembers Mark. "She used to say it was her instant family."

Many of Debbie's teachers still remember her vividly. And they remember
her long-lasting romance with Fred Phelps. "She was craving a family
environment, with all the emotional outlet and loving she imagined went
with it," recalls one. "When she was dating Fred, she thought she'd become
an adjunct member of his family and she wanted to be a part. When she
thought she was, she was very happy."

"She was such a warm, sweet girl," remembers another, "it's just a shame
what happened to her."

"In the car on candy sales and at the skating rink was the only time they
could see each other," says Mark.

Apparently Debbie was either narcoleptic or suffered from epilepsy.
"Periodically she'd pass out. I saw it happen 10 to 12 times. Suddenly
she'd stop talking and when you looked, she'd be limp, her head back and
eyes closed, though still breathing."

Debbie told Fred what it was, but Mark's brother never revealed it.

After they'd been stealing time together for several months, Fred Jr.
somehow found the resources to buy Debbie a gold band with a tiny diamond.
Mark remembers her showing it off proudly in the car that day. Fred was
17, she was still 16.

They began to talk of getting married.

"Before you jump to conclusions about another teenage marriage," Mark
observes, "remember my family didn't believe in dating around. We believed
God would send us our mates. That it would just happen one day, and we
would know it in our hearts. When it happened, that was it--whether you
were 16 or 66.

"Of course, my dad thought he was the god in charge of that. But I
wouldn't assume Fred and Debbie's union would have been another miscast
teenage marriage--and therefore my dad was right to do what he did."

Why not?

"Because my wife of 17 years, and my best friend for 22, is the same Luava
Sundgren I met at the rink that May of '71. We've been together since I
was 16 and she, 13, and we're still totally nuts about each other.

"You see, I think God has a hand in these things. And maybe it's naive of
me, but I think all that we went through as kids made us a lot wiser about
people than most grownups."

Mark estimates the passionate romance was kept from their father through
the New Year of 1971. Sometime shortly after, however, the Pastor Phelps
caught wind of his son's happiness.

"After that, my father forbade Fred to see her. He tried everything to get
Fred to stop."

Though Mark's brother was only a few months shy of 18, the pastor
regularly took the mattock to him to stop his 'slinkin' with that whore'.

In February of that year, Debbie left the orphanage and moved back in with
her mother and stepfather in the house on Lincoln Street.

The boys would swing by and pick her up there.

Shortly after she moved, Fred and Debbie moved again: they made their bid
for a life together free of their burdened pasts. They eloped.

Mark remembers they took one of the family cars, a '66 Impala wagon.

"And I had a pair of top-notch skates. They cost me a hundred bucks. I was
a serious skater back then, and I carried them around in a slick black
case and felt very professional. But my brother Fred took them along for
gas money. He sold them at a rink in Kansas City for ten bucks.

Fred's next younger sibling sighs. "I missed my skates, but I wasn't mad
at him. Back then, we had no sense of personal boundaries. If you needed
something, you just took it. Besides, I wanted them to get away." He
laughs: "Just wish he'd gotten more for those skates. Ten bucks was
insulting."

With a borrowed car and a tank full of gas, the intrepid couple hit the
great American highways--though not with that era's open agenda of
'wherever you go--there you are!'

To Fred Jr., the available universe consisted of two addresses and the
highway that connected them. One was on 12th Street in Topeka, the other
was the home and church of Forrest Judd in Indianapolis.

"My dad and Judd met at a Bible conference. Forrest was a Baptist preacher
and they hit it off. They used to come to Topeka and visit a lot. He and
my dad were doctrinally alike, but Forrest was a very different
personality. He was a jolly fat Santa type of guy--a factory worker and a
really neat fella. He had three sons of his own, but he'd become sort of a
'good' father figure to a lot of us kids.

"His church was the only one my dad approved of--and the reason that was
important to Fred Jr. is the same reason he's--they all--have been unable
to escape.

"You see, no matter what differences we had with him as the head of our
house, none of us questioned his authority as head of our church. It was a
certified gathering of the elect, remember. And the only way to get to
heaven was to do that, to assemble with the elect.

"My dad interpreted that, and we accepted it, as membership in a physical
congregation certified by him as elect...The Place...

"And there was only one Place besides his--Forrest Judd's.

"So my brother had nowhere to run, you see. Not if he wanted to get to
heaven. To a believer, even the most wonderful love in this world isn't
worth an eternity in the fires of hell.

"As long as we accepted my father had the power to so that--send us all to
hell--he had the trump card in any showdown over our choices."

After Judd and the Pastor Phelps conferred by phone, the father figure
convinced Fred Jr. there'd be no room on the Indy bus to heaven. If he
wanted to get there, he'd have to go back to Kansas.

A member of the staff at Topeka West remembers the pastor called the
school to rage at them, holding them responsible and threatening to sue:

"As I recall, the father stopped the marriage; and he was demanding the
school go and get them. He wanted returned separately so they wouldn't
'fornicate' on the way home.

"School officials tried to point out to him that Fred and Debbie were
teenagers, and they'd been alone together for over a week--the damage was
done."

From the moment the disappointed lovers started down the road they had
came, the clock began to tick toward tragedy.

Back in Topeka, Debbie moved in with her mom again, and Fred counted the
weeks till his 18th birthday. Though his father did everything in his
power to separate them, "those afternoon candy sessions went on just as
they had before," says Mark.

In May of 1971, the pastor changed his strategy. It would be OK for Fred
Jr. to see Debbie, but only when she came to services on Sunday.

By this time, Mark had met his future spouse, also at the skating rink,
and Luava was convinced to come to church as well.

"The only way we could see his sons officially," says Luava, "was if we
came to his church for Sunday service. They had no social life; they
weren't allowed to date."

So they came to service. Luava remembers that first Sunday: "When I
arrived, Debbie was already there, sitting in one of the pews, waiting for
it to begin. She looked back at me and smiled. I was nervous and her
warmth touched me. She was quite radiant and seemed very happy that day."

Luava fared better than Debbie under the pale-hearted pastor's basilisk
eye. She had long hair and was shy--a quality the pastor mistook for
subjection to her man.

"My father took an instant dislike to Debbie," Mark recalls. "She had all
her signals wrong: she had short hair; she was vivacious, passionate, and
fiery; she was direct; and she had an open, honest laugh."

That day, and forever after, the good pastor called her a 'whore' from the
pulpit, in person, to Fred, and the family.

"She didn't argue," says Mark. "She looked shell-shocked. She started to
cry, but did it quietly. After the service, she disappeared.

"After that, he preached to Freddy she was a whore from pulpit every
Sunday.

"Then one day," says Mark, "my father announced that the entire family was
going roller skating. Even mom. He said we'd have some 'fun' together."

The voice on the phone laughs. "It was a very peculiar experience. You
have to realize, in all the time we were growing up, our family never did
that. We never, not once, went on an outing together. We'd go sell candy,
or to run. but never to have fun. He never took us to the zoo, the movies,
out to eat, to the park, on a picnic, vacation, Thanksgiving at the
relatives, to see the fireworks on the Fourth of July--none of these
things.

"Now you can begin to understand what a selfish man our dad was. We spent
our entire childhoods and adolescence waiting on him and working for him
and getting beaten up by him. The idea of parenthood or fatherhood is an
alien concept to that man.

"So we were suspicious when he announced he was taking us all skating.
Sure enough, it turned out he'd caught wind of what was going on down at
the rink."

Fred and Mark had made plans to meet Debbie and Luava there that day, and
now the pressure had the drop on them. Though she'd already been to
services at their church, Mark only nodded to Luava as if she were a
passing acquaintance. When the pastor made fun of her parents within
earshot of Luava, Mark felt forced to laugh.

Fred and Debbie skated together briefly, but they didn't hold hands.

Everyone was watching the good Pastor Phelps.

Fred Sr. strapped on a pair of skates and storked out on the floor looking
like a new-born calf on ice.

"I wanted to show off for him," Mark recalls, "so I started skating
backwards and doing jumps when I knew he was watching. Do you think he
liked it? No way. My father went into a seething rage. He said he could
see I'd been spending all my goddam time down there, trying to get my dick
wet. What a guy--by the way, both Luava and I were virgins when we were
married...five years after we met."

Possibly due to the stress of the unexpected confrontation, Debbie had
another seizure. In a gloomy portent of what was to come, none of the
Phelps boys dared go to her aid. She lay unconscious and abandoned by the
good Christians of Westboro Baptist before 13 year-old Luava noticed and
rushed to her side.

At that, the pastor glared at Mark. "Someone should tell that girl we
don't associate with whores," he glowered. Then, as the steadfast teenager
revived her friend, Good Samaritan Phelps wobbled past on his skates and
muttered, "whore" at Debbie while she was recovering her feet.

The charitable timing of his comment caused Fred Jr.'s girl to burst into
tears. Luava helped her off the floor and into the ladies' room.

"I don't know why Fred's old man hates me so much," Debbie sobbed. "You're
lucky that he likes you."

Luava never forgot the bitterness of those sobs: SOS from the threshold of
a soul's despair.

Debbie went to services at the Westboro Church several times after that,
and, each time, she was called a whore from the pulpit.

Then why did she go?

"The hope of having Fred Jr. was greater than the pain of his father's
words," says Mark. "She even came over once and asked my father what it
was he wanted her to be. He told her she'd have to get an education and
amount to something if she wanted his son. That she'd have to go to
college and law school first, and, while she was doing it, she'd have to
stay away from Fred Jr. 'But right now,' he told her, 'you're just a
whore'.

"Debbie said she could do it--she just needed a chance to prove it. I
remember my father laughed in her face and said she'd always be a whore.

"Another time, Debbie had been riding along with us on the candy sales,
and afterward she and Fred intended to sneak out to a movie. Fred Jr.
asked her to wait in the candy room while he changed clothes. You see, my
dad never went in there."

The pastor chose that time to fly into one of his rages with Fred Jr.

"Of course, whenever my father started beating someone, the rest of the
kids would run into the candy room. It was sort of our bomb shelter.
They'd be pacing nervously, waiting for it to end, like a herd of cows
from the candy boxes to the laundry dryers and back.

"My father was beating on Fred and screaming things like, 'You
son-of-a-bitch! You got your dick wet! And now you're sniffin' after that
whore!' It made them both feel dirty for what was really the best thing
that had happened to them so far in their lives--their first love.

"Debbie got hysterical when she heard those things. She ran out crying."
Mark pauses. "And we were very nervous because she wasn't supposed to be
in there. I remember several of us followed her out to ensure she didn't
make a scene. That's where we were back then: nothing mattered except
keeping my dad cooled off.

"Outside in the street, Debbie was crying her heart out. She kept asking,
'why does he say those things about me?'"

Mark isn't sure of the timing, but he believes shortly after is when Fred,
how 18, decided to move out. The pastor vehemently opposed it, but Fred
stood up for himself.

Finally they compromised: the son would go and live with one of his
father's business associates.

Bob Martin was a retired army officer who ran Bo-Mar Investigations, a
private detective agency. After Fred, Jr. had been staying with Martin for
a week in his house, Mark remembers his father got a phone call.

It was Martin.

"Let's go," said the pastor to Mark, who'd become the squad leader in his
father's schemes.

While they drove to the detective's place, the pastor explained the plan
he and Martin had for Fred Jr.: wait till he was in the shower and then
confront him; a naked man feels vulnerable and powerless.

Mark's father told him Fred Jr. had just come in from work and gone into
the bathroom. "When he comes out, we'll be waiting," chuckled the guardian
of one of the two portals to the Kingdom of Heaven.

And so they were.

As Fred Jr. came out, towel around his waist, he was confronted by his
father, by Mark, and a suddenly hostile Bob Martin.

"Get your clothes! You're going home!" snapped the pastor.

The eldest son complied without argument.

"The next part I'll never forget," says Mark. "When we got out to the car,
I was in the back, my father was behind the wheel, and Fred was in the
front passenger seat. Bob had followed us and he opened the door on my
brother's side.

"Through the space between the front seat and the door, I could see him
place a revolver against my brother's knee. And he said: "If you run away
again, I have orders to come after you. And when I catch you, I'm going to
shoot you right here."

At the time, 'knee-capping' had spread to the United States from Italy and
France as the preferred punishment in underworld circles. It left its
victim crippled for life.

This article does not imply Fred Phelps Sr. has underworld ties. It only
remarks that anyone who dresses badly, who lives handsomely off the work
of urchins hustling in the streets, who disciplines subordinates by
beating them senseless, who fosters filial piety by threats of
knee-capping, who knocks his wife around regularly, who surrounds himself
with lawyers, and who is apparently beyond the long arm of the law could
have made a very respectable gangster.

Certainly not a pastor.

Fred Jr. enrolled at Washburn University that fall and Debbie returned to
Topeka West. Though the pastor had forbidden them to see each other
outside church, they continued to do so.

"My brother was struggling with his love for Debbie and his very real fear
of hell. A lot of non-Christians might find that hard to believe. But if
you grew up with your imagination open to Fred Phelps, believe me, hell
was a concrete reality."

The battle inside Fred Jr. would last until the following spring, but the
war had been lost when he turned back from Indiana.

In late September, Debbie dropped out of high school and moved in with
girlfriends at a house on Central Park Avenue. It was just a few blocks
from the Washburn campus.

"We went there a lot when we were out selling candy," says Mark. "That
lasted into December, probably, because I remember being there when it was
very cold and we were wearing winter coats."

But the pastor was relentless. And not only with the mattock.

"He knew Fred Jr. was still seeing Debbie, and he hit heavy, heavy on him
from the Bible. From things they said, I think my brother and Debbie had
probably become lovers at some time in the relationship, and I'm sure Fred
Jr. felt guilty about that.

"So, he was vulnerable to my father's framing of the situation as 'Debbie
the Whore...the Agent of Satan sent to lure him into temptation and
directly down into the gaping jaws of hell'."

Says Mark: "He'd spend time with her, then try to avoid her. In addition
to the guilt he was getting some pretty bad beatings.

While Fred Jr. drifted in fear, Debbie fought to hand on to the man she
cherished and the only person who'd ever cherished her.

Margie Phelps remembers Debbie would wait for her brother outside after
his classes on the Washburn campus. She would beg him to come back to her
in Play-Misty-for-Me scenarios, where a mentally ill woman stalks her
former lover.

"If she did do that," says Luava, "it was in hurt and frustration that he
would betray the love we all knew he felt."

"And, besides, it always worked," Mark adds. "He always went back to her,
at least while he was at Washburn."

"I don't think he ever stopped loving her," agrees Luava. "He was just
more scared of hell than he was of losing her."

Sometimes in December, 1971, events turned murky, fast. and fatal.

Apparently willing now to give Debbie up, but afraid he wouldn't be able
to do it while they lived in the same town, and also furious at his father
for forcing him to leave her, Fred Jr. ran away again, despite Bob
Martin's threat to find him and kneecap him if he did so.

From late December till mid-February, the following events are known:

Fred Jr. disappeared and no one in the family knew his whereabouts.

One night in January, shortly after Nate and Jonathon had been shaved and
beaten and the school had notified the police, Fred Jr. stopped by the
house without his father knowing. Nate remembers he asked to see their
heads and then commiserated with them about their embarrassment at the
police station.

About the same time, Luava's father saw Fred Jr. at a Washburn basketball
game. He had a K-State jacket and a rash on both arms. The other man
became concerned about Fred's welfare, and, with nothing to go on but the
jacket and the rash, he was able to track the troubled youth down working
at a produce business in Manhattan, where the state college was situated.

Fred Jr. turned down all offers of money or help.

At the time, he was living in the basement of a young married couple.

Whether Debbie visited him or even joined him up there is unknown.

What is known us that, on Valentine's Day, Fred Jr. showed up in Topeka
with a new girl for his father to meet.

"Betty," says Mark, "was a lot closer to what my father demanded. She was
another Luava--or at least who my dad originally thought Luava was--she
had long hair, and she was very quiet and submissive. She had also been
raised Methodist. A lot of Baptists started out as Methodists, you know.

"Debbie...was a Catholic."

A few weeks after Valentine's, Debbie came to see her mom.

Della A. remembers they went for a walk in the small park near where
Debbie had lived with her friends. Her daughter's spirits were very low,
she recalls.

Debbie confessed Fred had given her an engagement ring and they had
eloped, but that Fred's dad had made them come back. She admitted bitterly
that his father had told her she wasn't good enough for his son, and the
younger Phelps had been forced to obey him.

"Now Fred's found another girl," she told her mother. As they walked,
Della remembers her daughter took off the ring and threw it in the bushes.
"He's never going to marry me, Mama," she said, "but I know I'll never
love anyone else."

The mother says she tried to cheer her up, and later, thinking Debbie
might regret it, she returned to search for the ring in the grass.

She never found it, and even if she had, Debbie never would have received
it. The mother and daughter's walk in the park that afternoon would be
their last time together.

The remainder of Debbie's hopeful life can be found, not in the memories
of those who knew her, but in the dusty, impersonal files of the U.S. Army
Intelligence Criminal Investigations Division.

After seeing her mother that day, Debbie went up to Junction City, an army
town that served nearby Ft. Riley. It was also only a 20 minute drive from
Manhattan, where Fred was living.

Whether they saw each other during that time is not known. From the part
of her life that has been documented in the Army's investigation of her
death, it seems unlikely.

During her final days, Debbie Valgos touched a match to her longing soul.
She flamed up in a white-hot blaze of self-directed violence, anonymous
sex, amphetamines, heroin, and rock and roll.

All the things Pastor Phelps said she was, she'd be.

She moved in with a soldier. She shot smack. She partied for days without
sleep. The speed she was constantly on burned through her body till she'd
gone from 130 to 87 pounds. In less than a month the 5'7" girl had become
a walking corpse with the wide, burning eyes of the starved.

Perhaps that is when her face could at last reflect her heart: faltering
into despair after a lifetime without sustenance.

Because the effect was so striking, Debbie's new acquaintance nicknamed
here 'Eyes'.

But 'Eyes' had stared into her abyss, and she knew. At the end of all
worlds. Was a single lost soul.

The last days of Debbie Valgos' life, those few weeks in Junction City,
were one long suicide...a death dance through the Army bars...a soul
signing off. When she lost Fred Phelps, Debbie must have felt she had
forever lost her way...that she was never coming back...and so she touched
a match to her despair.

Her new friends told CID agents she had tried to commit suicide four times
in the weeks prior to her death: by jumping out a window, rolling off a
roof; and twice by drug overdose.

Each time they had stopped her or brought her through it.

The came the night of April 17, 1972.

Debbie was in the Blue Light, a soldier's bar. Though she had a soldier
waiting at home, that hardly mattered. She let two more pick her up. When
they invited her back to their barracks to 'party', she said 'yes'.

As they left, a girl who lived in Debbie's house insisted that she come
along. She'd been there during Debbie's earlier attempted suicides, and
she worried that the frail runaway might try it again.

They were spirited past the gates of the fort, hiding on the floor of the
car. The soldiers parked in an alley and had the girls crawl through a
window into their barracks room. Once inside, one of them offered Debbie
some speed.

It was a bottle of crushed mini-bennies, according to CID reports.

Debbie took it, and the soldier turned to put on a record. When she gave
it back, the boy was amazed. "You took way too much!" he said. "You'll be
up three or four days!"

Debbie only smiled at him.

What might have been a four-day problem for a 180 pound man, Debbie
undoubtedly hoped would solve all her problems at 87 pounds, less than
half the other's body weight.

Shortly after, "Eye started to have a 'body trip'," states the girl who
had accompanied her. "She shut her eyes and just started moving with the
music. She did that for awhile and then she started to act dingy. She
called me over and said she felt like little needles were poking her all
over her whole body and she was tingling. I told her I would stay with her
and not to make any noise in the barracks."

When Debbie started rolling around on the floor and mumbling, her friend
worried she might hurt herself, and so she sat on her.

The other girl, who apparently was quite obese, continued drinking and
talking while she kept Debbie pinned beneath her.

The party went on.

Debbie was babbling incoherently.

After almost another hour, everyone became alarmed at Eye's grotesque
physical contortions. They pulled her back through the window, loaded her
in the car, and smuggled her off base. Returning to her new boyfriend's
house, they woke him and ran the tub full of cold water.

By then, Debbie had passed into coma.

She would not be taken to Irwin Army Hospital At Ft. Riley until 5 a.m.,
nearly five hours after she'd ingested almost half a bottle of crushed
benzedrine.

Debbie lasted 20 hours unconscious in ICU, just long enough for her
sister, Bernadette, to find her.

At 1 a.m., her heart stopped. Her spirit had flamed up and was gone.

She was 17. She was sunny and loving and only wanted to be loved. After
all she'd been through, Debbie Valgos thought she'd found safe haven with
the family Phelps.

She died for her mistake.

In that spring of 1972, one of the Top 40 songs playing on the rock and
roll radios Debbie no doubt listened to while riding her dark current of
heroin, amphetamines, and despair was a tribute to Janis Joplin, sung by
Joan Baez:

"She once walked right by my side
I know she walked by yours,
Her striding steps could not deny
Torment from a child who knew,
That in the quiet morning
There would be despair,
And in the hours that followed
No one could repair...

That poor girl...
Barely here to tell her tale,
Rode in on a tide of misfortune
Rode out on a mainline rail...

But the Pastor Phelps, devotee of a hateful god, had made up a song of his
own:

"I remember getting home from school the day it appeared in the papers,"
says Mark, "and my dad came dancing down the stairs, swaying from the
knees and clapping his hands, singing: 'The whore is dead! The whore is
dead!'

"He paraded around the house, singing and laughing with that maniacal
giggle he has, 'the whore is dead!'"

Mark pauses to let the horror of the scene settle in.

One is reminded of the warning from the first epistle of John: "He who has
no love for the brother he has seen cannot love the God he has not
seen..."

Margie Phelps remembers shortly after Debbie's death Fred Jr. came to
visit their mom secretly. Margie says she didn't know he was in the house.
She came into a room inadvertently and saw Fred Jr. and her mother sitting
in chairs, facing each other. The eldest son had his head in her lap and
she was stroking his hair.

"Fred was crying," says Margie. "I heard afterward it was for Debbie."

"There's no question that my brother wanted to spend his life with
Debbie," says Mark. "She was who he loved. And I knew her well enough to
say my brother was the first light of hope she'd had in her life. When he
left her, that light went out."

The phone voices, bouncing along microwave relays from California, cease.
The ghostly dishes wait, sentinels in the wheat fields, the mountain
passes, the desert, and the ancient western forests beyond.

"We think of Debbie sometimes," says Luava softly. "We know Fred does
too."

"She'd had a hard life before, but all she really needed was someone who
would value her," Mark observes. "If my dad had allowed that, Debbie and
Fred would have really blossomed.

"You know in Matthew 12:20? Where Jesus says, 'the bruised reed I will not
break; the flickering candle I won't snuff out; instead I will be your
hope'? With the evil and the hurt he's caused during his life, my father
has no right to the name of 'pastor'--nevermind 'guardian of The Place."

Della A. is more direct. She has a message for the pastor:

"You tell Fred Phelps I'll wait in hell for him."

Margie remembers Debbie's sister, Bernadette, knocked on their door one
day. "She went on about how we were responsible for Debbie's death."

Bernadette admits doing that. "I do blame them," she says. "My sister had
a tough enough time without those people. If she hadn't met them, she'd
probably be alive today."

"We thought she was really coming along," reflects a former staff member
at Topeka West. "Of all the kids there who had difficult backgrounds to
overcome, we felt sure she'd be one of those who would."

No one who knew her has forgotten her. Not the sisters at St. Vincent's,
not her teachers, not even her dentist when she was a child.

"I was just thinking of her," admitted one.

You were? Why?

"Oh...your thoughts return to someone like that...so young and full of
promise...a really sweet girl...and then to die before her life ever had a
chance to start...yes...Debbie comes to mind from time to time."

"Valgos?" Fred Jr.'s voice sounds eerie and distant over the phone. "That
name isn't familiar."

Silence.

"But then I had lots of girlfriends. At least five or six in high school."

No one else remembers that.

"Oh...oh, I remember now. The little girl at the orphanage?"

Two years later, Fred Jr. married Betty, the woman he'd brought home that
Valentine's Day. Betty was approved by his father.

She was the second woman he'd ever dated.

For the moment, this article shall abandon cynicism and consider
beginner's luck in the search for mates. After all, Mark Phelps is quite
happy with his first date of 22 years ago. So is Luava. And, if Fred Jr.
and Debbie were destined for each other, what happy chance they met on his
first date.

However, the odds that Fred would then meet Miss Right directly after he
met Debbie begin to gnaw at the suspension of disbelief in this fire and
brimstone fiction of predestined characters.

"I think not being able to have Debbie, and her committing suicide, I
think that just broke my brother," observes Mark. "After that, he
submitted totally. He'd lost his thrill for life. He went to law school,
like his dad wanted; he married a girl his dad approved; and he shouldered
a role in The Place.

"And that's where he is today. He just turned 40."

Betty was a music major at K-State when she met Fred Jr. She had perfect
pitch and played between eight and ten instruments. However, she
transferred to Washburn for her last two years of college, and went to law
school on command.

Mark remembers a time in 1973, when Betty was visiting Fred Jr. in the
kitchen and the pastor started beating Nate savagely with the mattock in
an adjoining room.

Betty had been eating a cantaloupe and she shoved her spoon all the way
through it and screamed: Stop it!"

Says Mark: "The old man came in from the church where he'd been beating
Nate, and he said to Betty: 'You got a problem with this?' Then he turned
to Fred Jr.: "If that girl has a problem with this, then I'm not going to
put up with it! You better get her under subjection, or you're not gonna
be marryin' her!"

In one of his fax missives, the pastor has stated:

"Wives who have strayed too far traditional family values of home and
children need to be whipped into godly obedience. Sparing the rod and
sparing either the children or the women is a strategy that fundamentalist
Christians reject. Complacency and misplaced 'equality' notions produce
tormented, social misfits like (here Phelps names several female city
officials) who are hormonally and intellectually incapable of rational
thought. Like the termite, these so-called modern ideas promulgated by
Satan's servants are destroying the studs of the family unit."

Nate remembers: "Betty was put in her place, both by the old man and
Freddy. And she was the butt of numerous comments from the pulpit over the
following months until she finally displayed the 'proper spirit of
obedience'.

Luava recalls that, some time after Debbie's death, Betty and she were
talking when suddenly Fred's new girl started crying. "He still carries
her picture in his wallet," she sobbed. "He's in love with a dead girl."

The Phelps family forbade reporters from asking Fred Jr. about Debbie
Valgos during interviews, and threatened to sue the paper if it printed
the story of the couple's broken dreams.

"That child was very precious to us," says the former director of St.
Vincent's, Sister Frances Russell, who refused to give an interview, "and
all my instincts are to protect her--even in death."

Sister Therese Bangert came to the orphanage the year after Debbie died,
"so I didn't know her," she says. "But I remember her because of the
impact her death had on everyone who was there. Even today, mentioned the
name of Debbie Valgos around some of the sisters would be like knocking
the wind out of them."

Just as he threatened to shove the blind runner off the track when the old
man was in his way, charitable Fred Phelps toppled Debbie Valgos into her
abyss when she threatened to lure one of his Chosen from The Place.

"He was scared of her He knew she'd take Fred Jr. from him," says Mark.
"My father saw Debbie's weak spot--her self-esteem--and he did everything
in his power to drive a sword through it...right into her heart.

"Debbie didn't hate life like my father. She loved it. He knew she'd never
fit in there. Eventually she'd leave and pull Freddy with her."

The pastor's second son adds: "If, during the course of your
investigation, you'd discovered my father had something to do with
Debbie's death, I would not have been surprised. That's how far I think he
was willing to go to keep us on as adult servants to his ego."

This chapter focused on the torture, kidnapping, and later troubles of
Kathy Phelps and the tragedy of Fred Jr. and Debbie Valgos because these
facts provide a clear insight into the horror coming of age held in the
house of the good pastor Phelps.

It has been an inquiry into a man who gathers a following wherever souls
are writhing in agony from the evil done to them. It is a look behind the
veil of a false prophet who, with investigation, appears more and more as
a new type of serial killer: Pastor Phelps is too clever, too cowardly,
and too lawyerly to kill the bodies.

His life is a trail of murdered souls.

And his worst victims have been his own family.

No man or woman living on the Phelps block has been allowed to become the
plant foreshadowed by the seed.

This chapter has revealed the betrayal and murder of three spirits by
Phelps, would-be prophet of the subdivided prairie, hopeful John Brown of
religious radio.

Kathy Phelps' life remains at the level of subsistence and
self-destruction. Her brother, Nate, has been diagnosed with Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is quite likely that Kathy suffers from it
also.

Today, but for the statute of limitations, the brutal beatings and torture
this pretty teenager experienced would bring a long jail sentence to their
perpetrator.

Fred Jr. never became a history teacher. Recently, he left the law
profession and works for the Kansas Department of Corrections.

Debbie Valgos died of a broken heart.

A quick survey of the curricula vitae of the Phelps children shows his
astonishing success in their conforming to his wishes. In fact, the Phelps
Plan because a sausage factory for loyal and legal support of one man's
ambitions:

*Of the 13 children, 11 got law degrees--nine of those from Washburn
University

*Of the nine loyal offspring and four approved spouses, all but one
took law degrees; eight have undergraduate degrees in Corrections or
Criminal Justice.

One can only wonder why the pandemic fascination for prison among the
Phelps loyalists.

For the nine kids who stayed with Fred, God provided only three spouses
from within the church. Fred Jr. and brother Jonathon had to provide for
themselves. They became Westboro outlaws to find mates among the damned.
When they eventually returned to the fold, these 'tainted women' were only
accepted after a long probation and apprenticeship at being a
wife-in-subjection.

Six of the Phelps daughters remain the compound. Two of the, were
betrothed to Chosen already residing in The Place.

The rest grow old. Perhaps bitter. Alternately resentful and desperately
dependent on the one man in their life.

To chronicle the failures of others among the loyal Phelps children in
their youthful attempts to escape over the wall of their father's fear and
ego is to compose a litany of unhappy and sordid tales, ones that would
burn the ears of the listener.

"You know she's admitted she's a whore," says Phelps of Shawnee County
D.A., Joan Hamilton.

"She hasn't admitted she's a whore," replies ABC's John Stossell. They're
taping for 20/20: "She admitted she had a one night stand."

"Then, if you believe the Bible, she's a whore," insists Phelps. "Shackin'
up with some guy one night or a thousand nights, she meets the Bible
definition of a depraved, adulterous, whorish woman."

Pastor Phelps would be wise to take a quick poll of the home team,
especially his daughters. He might find his glass house full of mischief.

The misadventures of the clan Phelps can be pursued into allegations of
adultery, fornication, illegitimacy, and abortion without fear of libel.

However, since it is also the thesis of this article that his children are
actually the principal victims of Pastor Phelps, it is not appropriate to
expose the rest of these embarrassing stories in detail. Despite their
strident condemnation of others' equal and lesser sins, it will suffice to
point out the foibles of his children would make as interesting reading
for the pastor's fax gossip as anything he's printed.

If those without sin shall toss the first stones, the grim clan at
Westboro will have to keep a tight grip on theirs.

With his private genetic following, Pastor Phelps has found a world
perhaps he's always sought. One where they care for him and do his bidding
and never leave him.

To make that happen required the promise of their youth be devoted to the
unsettled scores of his past. Fred Phelps crushed the innocence and joy,
the dreams of all but three of his children.

His reputation as a civil rights advocate is perhaps ironic.

The pastor's chains are subtle, but stronger than the iron ones worn by
the ancestors of those he often brags he's helped free.

The children who were raised in the nightmare of 12th Street carry their
shackles in their hearts. It is their fear of their father's key to hell,
and their view that the world is hateful and hates them, that, like the
elephants in India, keeps them serving the will of a man who, by now they
must realize, is much smaller than themselves.

The vulnerable pastor hoards his hell-stunned flock close around his own
flickering candle. He pulls them like a threadbare cloak about his old
wounds, huddling against the cutting hawk of a cold soul wind blowing from
somewhere out of his past.

Sitting in her mother's house, the sinking afternoon sun pours through the
screen door, casting its soft gold across the widow's tattered carpet.

Della A. offers, a little reluctantly and her eyes bright with guilt, the
last moments of her daughter: a First Communion veil; a dried corsage from
an Easter Sunday get-to-together, and the photo album Debbie kept at the
orphanage.

On its cover, printed in the awkward, block letters of a bruised but
hopeful new reed, a flickering candle not yet quenched, are the words:

I LOVE FRED PHELPS

"Debbie Valgos was a whore extraordinaire," snaps Margie. But the father's
words sound empty and formulaic on the daughter's tongue.

CHAPTER EIGHT

"Over the Wall at Westboro"

Listening to Fred Jr. pretend he doesn't remember a girl named Debbie
Valgos is an eerie experience. It's as if one were listening to a teenager
deny he borrowed the car while his parents were gone.

"They're all still children," observes Mark. "Still trying to please their
father because they're afraid of him."

What are they afraid of?

"They've been conditioned all their lives to cringe at his anger or
disapproval. Even now, with families of their own, they'll conform. In
fact, a lot of what your article reveals about my siblings that my dad
didn't know--my sisters taking lovers, the details of Debbie and Fred, and
Jonathon stealing on candy sales--my brothers and sisters are going to
panic at that. Even today, they're still frightened of his judgements."

Research indicates that three out of four children in criminally abusive
families will be unable to surmount their experience. As adults, they will
rationalize their past and will accept abusive behavior as the norm in
both the outside world and their personal lives.

As adults, they will rationalize their past and will accept abusive
behavior as the norm in both the outside world and their personal lives.

It is instructive that nine of the 13 Phelps children, almost exactly the
predicted ratio, continue to embrace the pastor's abusive world and ways.

But this chapter is not about the ones who tried to climb their father's
barrier and slipped back. It's about two who made it over the wall at
Westboro; who went on to lives that are beacons of hope to others who have
survived abusive families.

Mark Phelps might be his father's pointman today but for a pretty 13
year-old named Luava Sundgren.

In May of 1971, a few months after Fred and Debbie had been dragged back
from their aborted elopement, Fred and Mark met Debbie at the skating
rink. His brother and Debbie paired off, and Mark remembers he was rolling
along alone on his rented skates, wishing for his hundred dollar pros his
brother had sold, when suddenly a petite girl, slim and shapely, with long
dark hair hanging halfway down her back sailed by, fixed her beautiful
blue eyes on him, and smiled.

"You're a good skater," she said. And she pulled Mark's heart right off
his sleeve.

He was only 16, and she, 13, but for Mark the search for his life's mate
was over.

Only two months after rescuing his eldest for the moment from the charms
of the 'whore-extraordinaire', the Pastor Phelps found another wily ally
of the serpent threatening his second son.

Except this girl was no fragile psyche, vulnerable and clueless, as Debbie
Valgos would be. Raised Catholic, Debbie had no criteria by which to
identify Protestant heresies, and, coming from a broken home, she had no
expectations of esteem or consideration from the outside world. Luava
Sundgren came from a conservative Lutheran family firmly grounded in
unconditional love.

"Even as a young teenager," says Mark, "my wife had high self-esteem and a
very clear idea of right from wrong. Her parents were as firm about their
god of love and their love for her as my father was about his hateful god
and his hate for all."

The pastor had met his match.

This girl, though slight and shy, was not going to accept the pastor's
interpretation of the Bible as his personal myth; nor would she take to
being called a 'whore'. But, at first, things went well between the two.

A few weeks after the teenage couple had met to skate again and Mark had
been calling her secretly by phone, Luava came to church. It was on that
Sunday in early June that Debbie first came as well.

Things went better for Luava because the pastor believed her long hair
showed her subjection to God and man. And her naturally shy and quiet way
belied the stout heart within her.

If his boys had to have mates, here was a good example of the kind of girl
Fred Phelps wanted to see joining his church. Not the sassy, rebellious,
Catholic, blonde sex-rocket with the page boy cut Fred Jr. had brought
home.

In high school, the disfavor of their family name, combined with the
pastor's refusal to allow his children any participation in
extracurricular activities, assured the Phelps kids were the pariahs of
Topeka West.

Across town under the gothic vaults of Topeka High, Luava was quite the
opposite. She had many friends and became one of the school's
cheerleaders. It was a mystery to everyone why she insisted on dating a
member of the Addams family over on 12th Street. Luava remembers the
curious questions and the biting comments she got.

So why did she?

She laughs: "At first? Because he was a good skater, and he was cute--but
remember, I was only 13. That's what 13 year-olds notice. Later, it's not
so important if they skate or not--" she laughs again.

"Seriously though, he had so much energy and he was very smart and he was
really sweet to me. What chance did I have? Even my dad told me I wouldn't
find a better one!"

Because she was just 13, Luava's parents at first would only allow Mark to
visit her at their home. He would sneak out whenever he could, or drop by
while on candy sales. After a year and a half, her father agreed to let
them date. He even offered to give Mark enough for dinner and a movie out.
(Luava had been attending services every Sunday at the pastor's lonely
keep, and she had invited her parents several times--enough for her dad to
feel sorry for Mark.)

The Pastor Phelps knew nothing about Mark's home courting advantage, nor
the teenager's plans to date.

Mark refused Mr. Sundgren's offer to pay for their date and instead found
a weekend job as a busboy in a steakhouse.

That lasted one shift. His father found out about Mark's endeavor to
expand his independence and promptly beat him. After, he forced Mark to
quit the job and forbade him to take another. As was shown in Chapter
Five, it wasn't his son's study hours the pastor was concerned about;
rather, any time spent working elsewhere was time one could be working for
'The Place'.

So, Mark had to shave a dollar here and there off his candy sales and
summer yard work to court Luava. When his dad shut himself in the master
bedroom for days, eating and watching television, Mark would sneak the car
for a few hours and take Luava to a movie or dinner at a fast food
restaurant.

Once, they were in the Taco-Tico at 15th and Lane around 9 p.m. when the
place was robbed. Two men ski masks came in, and the young teenagers
ducked under the table.

"After the hold-up," says Mark, with Luava laughing in the background, "we
ran out too. We didn't want our names involved as witnesses because my dad
would have heard about it and the jig would have been up--my secret life
of dating."

Luava is still laughing.

"Trouble was, after we hit the sidewalk running, only then did it occur to
us everyone would think we were the ones who'd just robbed Taco-Tico."

Despite Luava's quiet demeanor and biblical mane, Mark soon realized she
was not plugged in to the world according to Fred.

For example, one day after Debbie had died, Mark, Nate, and Jonathon were
out in the car selling candy. After his older brother's habit, Mark had
brought Luava along with them, and they sat and smooched while the two
younger boys worked in the neighborhood.

When Nate came back to report scant sales for that day, Mark gave the
command by reflex: "Chin-chin!" And Nate put his chin on the back of the
front seat.

With Luava sitting beside him, Mark punched his little brother painfully
in the face.

In equal reflex, one from another moral world, Luava immediately slapped
her boyfriend hard enough to bring stars.

"Why did you..." he asked in stunned bewilderment.

"Why did you do that?" she demanded.

Soon the esteem Mark had for this petite firecracker--five-two, eyes of
blue, and with a fist like his father--caused him to begin opening his
heart to her radically different view of human relationships.

For several years before he met Luava, Mark had been his father's
assistant master-at-arms: when there was a whipping due one of his
siblings, sometimes the pastor would order Mark to do it.

"At first I thought it was a great idea," says Nate, who received most of
his elder brother's ministrations, "because he didn't have my father's
violent spirit when he swung the mattock. However, that was short-lived.
After a few less than satisfactory beatings--from my father's
viewpoint--he threatened to beat Mark instead. Suffice it to say that
afterwards I couldn't tell the difference between one of my dad's and one
of my brother's beatings--except maybe in their angle of attack."

"My dad would tell me to do it," agrees Mark, "and then he'd go upstairs
and yell down to us in the church: 'If I don't hear it up here, it's you
who'll get the beating!'"

Now, however, confused by his new feelings for this remarkable girl, Mark
began to slam the mattock onto the pew cushions instead.

"It sounded exactly the same as it did when I hot Nate," he recalls, with
what must be a smile at his end of the line. "And Nate would just howl in
pain every time I hit the pew. It worked perfectly.

"But it wasn't until Luava that it would have ever occurred to me to do
that. I've been told children from abusive homes never develop empathy.
Boy, that was us. It was survival...period. Save yourself.

"Remember how I said I felt when Mom used to drive off with everyone in
the car, and Nate would get left behind, running alongside my window,
begging not to be left alone with my dad? I literally could not feel for
him. I didn't even know how to consider what he might be going through. I
was just glad I was getting out, and that was all that mattered.

"But, after I'd been around Luava, what was going on inside other people
suddenly started to matter. I guess you could say she kissed me and
changed me from the frightened little frog my father had made me..."

They laugh.

"But after I fell in love with her, it made me want to care about others."

Little wonder Mark's wife is Nate's favorite sister-in-law still today.

Though Luava refused to join the pastor's church, she continued to attend
Sunday services there for nearly two years.

"I knew if I didn't, Mark's father would make it even harder, if not
impossible for me to see him," she says.

"During that time, I learned things about Fred Sr. I didn't like."

Such as?

"That God hates. It seemed to me he was putting his own words in God's
mouth. I mean, Mark's father was a pretty disturbed guy. I could see that
and I was only 15. It's just sad he didn't have the self-knowledge to
leave religion out of it and get some help.

"Also I didn't like his attitude toward family. His belief in beating
children and that women were servants to men. As a future wife and mother,
that left me little motivation to join his claustrophobic community."

Toward the end of Luava's two-year ceasefire with the pale-hearted pastor,
she arrived for services early one Sunday--too early. Kathy Phelps was
getting beaten with a mattock upstairs.

In shock, Mark's girl listened to his sister's screams of pain and sobbing
pleas for the good minister to stop. He didn't. Luava turned on her heel
and walked out.

Shirley Phelps, who always wept hysterically whenever her father went into
his whipping mode, ran after Luava. At the door she grabbed her arm.
"Please...please...," she sobbed. "He doesn't mean it...he doesn't know
what he's doing..."

Mark, who was there, remembers Luava "stopped and looked Shirl dead in the
eye. 'No, Shirl,' she said, 'you're wrong. He does mean it.' And she
left."

Shortly after, the pastor decided to dish Luava some of the abuse he'd
used on Debbie Valgos. Following Sunday services, while Luava waited
within earshot in the church, the pastor collared Mark for a 'talk' in the
law offices adjoining.

"He was punching and kicking me," remembers Mark. "And yelling in crude
anatomical detail everything he said he bet I was doing to her when we
were alone. He knew she would hear, that's why he did it."

And that was Luava's last Sunday at the Westboro Church. She walked out
and down to the shopping center on Gage Boulevard where she called her
father to come pick her up.

When she told Mark it was over, Luava says she never asked him to leave
the church. She didn't believe he could. She knew he had been taught that,
if he left, he would be taken by God during the first night while he slept
and that he would wake up in hell.

Mark, for his part, was in despair. The 19 year-old flung himself face
down in Luava's yard and cried. And there he remained for two hours,
embarrassing her parents in front of the neighbors.

Luava's dad even came to her and told her, "I didn't realize you were so
hard-hearted,"

Such emotional firmness in a 16 year-old was remarkable. But Luava didn't
know what else to do. She had no intention of joining the Westboro family
cult and raising children in that kind of environment, she says. And she
Mark wouldn't leave.

Meanwhile, one can only imagine the kind of talk this generated among the
deeper keels in Luava's cheerleading set. She was certainly a girl with a
foot in both worlds.

After the break-up, reportedly neither Mark nor Luava slept or ate for
days. "I walked around in a fog," says Mark.

Then he found out he would get a 'B' instead of an 'A' in one of his
courses at Washburn.

"That meant I was in for more trouble," he adds. "Somehow, the idea my
father might now hurt my body after making my heart so miserable...it just
seemed insane and ridiculous...and if all this misery was to please God, I
was beginning to think it was awfully mean and petty for a Being that had
created such a majestic universe...

"And that's when I began to hope Luava might be right. That God was a
loving God, and not full of hate like my father...and that if He was made
of love...then he wouldn't send me to hell for loving her so much, would
He?

"So I did it.

"I just grabbed some clothes and went to a friend's house. He'd told me if
I ever wanted to leave, I'd be welcome to stay with his family the first
few days. I just showed up on their doorstep and they took me in."

Mark pauses.

"It might seem funny now, but those were the most terrifying hours of my
life. I lay awake most of the night in their guest room, in cold,
absolutely cold terror. Waiting for God to take me. Afraid if I fell
asleep, I'd wake up in hell. Literally. The ultimate nightmare.

"But I didn't. I woke up in the same bed the next morning. It was then I
realized God might be nicer and the world bigger than my father had
taught."

Mark landed on his feet, renting a room from a retired couple and working,
first as a busboy, then as a salesman in a downtown shoestore.

He and Luava were re-united, dating on weekend and talking every night on
the phone.

However, Mark was in a serious car accident six weeks later and
miraculously escaped injury. "That shook me up," he says. "I thought God
was giving me one last chance before He did what my father said He'd do.
So I high-tailed it back home."

And Luava broke it off again. "This time I wasn't so strong," she recalls.
"I was totally miserable. I almost went over there many times."

By this time Fred had taken to calling her 'the Philistine whore', so life
with father and a broken heart soon had Mark willing to play tennis with
death once more.

After a few weeks, he returned to his new life.

Only to have the pastor swoop in to snatch him back, as he had with Kathy.

"That time, however," says Mark, "I was lucky. Just as we pulled up to the
church on 12th, some of my dad's law clients pulled up too.

"It was like a Hitchcock film: my father couldn't do anything in front of
them, so I just got out, walked through the front door, and out the back.
Nobody stopped me."

After that, Mark held on to his independence and his dreams with an
impressive tenacity.

"I knew I made enough money for only two of the following," he says: "an
apartment; a car; and college tuition. I needed the car; and--now that it
was for me and not my father--I wanted to finish college."

For two years, Mark slept in his car or in the backroom of the print shop
where he worked all day. In the evenings he took classes, and on weekends
he worked as a dishwasher in a restaurant. He took his showers at the gym.

Luava completed her junior year and senior years at Topeka High, dating
Mark on weekends.

Despite the pastor's curiously vivid and explicit imagination, the young
couple's relationship remained chaste and unconsummated.

When his brother Fred asked Mark to be his best man at his wedding, Mark
was thrilled and agreed. But when he showed up at the Westboro church for
the ceremony, the pastor demanded Mark recant or depart before they went
forward.

"It was a trap," says Mark wearily. "If he ever missed a beat at being a
jerk--he did it before I was born."

Mark departed. He has never been back.

Nor did the pastor miss his beat damning his second son to the fires of
hell. When Mark refused to die in his sleep, Phelps sent him his notice of
eviction from the assembled elect of The Place: Mark was cast out and
"delivered unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh".

The pastor then tore up both Mark and Kathy's pictures in front of the
rest of the family. (Kathy was also gone by then: she was working as a
waitress and living with a soldier on 12th and Topeka; apparently the GI
took a dim view of anyone kidnapping his girlfriend, and the Phelps
quick-reaction team left her unmolested.)

Mark did see his father again however.

At the YMCA gym one day, the pastor took the time to stalk up to Mark,
close so no one else could hear, and whisper, his glittering with hatred:
"I hope God kills you."

God didn't.

In May, 1976, Mark graduated from Washburn University with a business
degree. In August of that year, he married his childhood sweetheart after
a courtship that had lasted since 1971. He was 22. She was 19.

Though the family Phelps were all invited, none of them came. Many of them
might have wanted to be there, but they had been forbidden to attend.
Pastor Phelps had threatened anyone who did with being "delivered unto
Satan for the destruction of the flesh".

If Fred Phelps is ever granted the preponderance of his wishes, old Satan
will be burning the midnight oil, destroying all that flesh. But, devil
knows, weddings are a lot work.

The newlyweds cramped apartment on 15th and Lane quickly became the
headquarters for Phelps exiles. At one point, both Nate and Margie were
living within its tiny confines alongside Mark and Luava.

"We didn't have much time to ourselves," laughs Mark's wife. "He brought
half his family out with him. Fortunately, Nate and I have always been
friends. And, back then at least, Margie and I were too."

Later the dissident couple would be the consolation and support for
Paulette, Jonathon's mistress driven from Westboro when she became
pregnant by him. Abandoned by Jonathon and rejected by his family, "she
went through some pretty tough times," remembers Mark.

Nate's departure was more dramatic. Inclined towards the freethinker and
sceptic, and long the family's designated scapegoat, Nate was initially
not so torn about leaving the assembly of the elect.

"He constantly told me I was worthless," says Nate about his father. "That
I was a son of Belial (Satan); I was going to end up in prison; I was
evil. That message came through loud and clear. For years since, I have
had to struggle to achieve any sense of worthiness in the eyes of God or
man.

"My father often opined I was such a loser, I'd never even make it through
high school. Two weeks before the end of my senior year, when it was
apparent I would, he decided my weight needed constant watching. Instead
of being allowed to take my final exams. I was pulled out of school and
made to ride a stationary bicycle six hours a day. Now...there's a
rational act...a real daddy-non-compis-mentis.

"So I didn't graduate. I had to take the GED later for my high school
diploma." Nate clears his throat.:

"A few weeks before my 18th birthday, I bought an old Rambler for $350. I
parked it down the street and I didn't tell anyone I had it. I took my
things out to the garage a little at a time, and I hid them amid the mess
out there."

On the night before his birthday, around 15 minutes to midnight on
November 21, 1976, Nate pulled his car into the drive, opened the garage,
and loaded his few personal belongings in the back.

Leaving his keys in the ignition, the black sheep walked into his
childhood house of fear and pain. He climbed the stairs to the room where
his father slept and he...screamed.

At the top of his lungs. And left.

That night, Nate slept in the men's room of an APCO gas station because it
was heated. He found work and eventually ended up living with Mark, Luava,
and Margie (who was also experimenting with adult independence).

When the couple moved to St. Louis, Margie and Nate took an apartment and
jobs in Kansas City. The Nate went to work and for Mark at a print shop in
St. Louis, and Margie returned to the Westboro community.

She would become one of Pastor Phelps' staunchest defenders.

In 1978, Mark, Luava, and Nate returned and opened their first copy shop
in Prairie Village, a suburb of Kansas City. It was a success. In 1979,
the couple opened another shop in Topeka, and Nate stayed in Kansas City
to manage the first.

At that point, says Nate, "it hit me."

It was the first time he'd ever been totally separated from all of his
family. Though he held no illusions about his father, deep down Nate had
always wanted to be a part of the rest--his mother and brothers and
sisters--in some other capacity than the bad seed.

Now, he felt cut off and alone.

It was exactly then that his sisters began calling him, pressing him to
return, saying they could call be one family again, and that their father
had stopped his beatings.

So, three years after his Jim-Morrison-exit, the prodigal returned.

However, the pastor's idea of a welcome was to draw up, not a feast, but a
document.

Nate remembers they had him sit down and pen a letter to Mark--which they
dictated. It was left on Nate's desk at the shop in Kansas City, and it
informed Mark he had lost his manager without notice due to Mark's serving
as ballast for that manager's slide into hell.

In August of 1993, in a desperate attempt to discredit what she must have
imagined was going to be devastating testimony from the 'bad' son (as much
or more of the evidence against the pastor came from the 'good' son),
Margie Phelps announced to Capital-Journal investigators she had "the
smoking gun to prove Nate is lying".

It was a copy of Nate's sign-off to Mark of 14 years before.

The letter, she said, proved Nate was on good terms with his family three
years after he'd claimed he'd cut his ties to them.

Curious as to why the copy of a letter written by Nate and delivered to
Mark would find its way into Margie's possession so long after the fact,
investigators then heard from Nate how Shirley and Margie had given him
the paper and dictated the letter to Mark as one of the terms for Nate's
return.

The fact that the Westboro Church kept it on file, as a potential lever on
Nate at some point in the future--even if that future came nearly in the
next generation--can only finds its parallel in the handbooks of the KGB.

The Phelps family congregation may not be able to place the name or face
of the girl the pastor drove to suicide, but they never misplace a
letter--even if that letter was never addressed to them.

For Nate, rebirth into his family came with the pastor's umbilical drawn
tight around his neck. He was hazed like a plebe at Fred's West Point.

Though he got his meals now, Nate was expected to work in the law office
full-time for that and a room. He was also expected to complete college
and attend law school. "And, in return for my work, my father would pay my
tuition," says Nate. "But I had no desire for law school, and I had debts
to pay. I needed a cash income--not just room and board."

Nate declined the work in the law offices and found employment outside the
compound.

In the meantime, his father refused to talk to him, handling any business
through intermediaries. Nate attended services, but was excluded from the
adult male congregation. Instead, he worshipped with the women and
children.

"Every Sunday, just prior to services, all the men in the church would
congregate in the old man's office to sit and chat. When they filed out
and took their seats in the auditorium, it signaled services were
beginning. It was a rite of passage for the older boys when they were
allowed to join. You know, then or before, I was never included."

During the ensuing months, his father still refused to speak to him.
Instead, envoys were sent to inform Nate the pastor was displeased he was
working 'outside'. Again and again, it was suggested to Nate he ought to
give up the 'outside' job and work in the law office; that his father
would pay him for this by sending him to law school.

Nate always refused. He didn't want to go to law school. And he needed
cash to pay his debts. He was 21 at the time.

"If my dad had paid a wage, even a small one, it would have been OK. But
money in your pocket, to him, meant less control over you. It implied
mobility and independence, something he was not going to tolerate."

All of the loyal Phelps children and their approved spouses followed the
pastor's formula: they worked as law clerks, legal secretaries, and
gophers for Fred as he churned out lawsuits. In return, the pastor took
care of what he had decided were their needs.

Finally, one Sunday their father devoted his entire sermon to denouncing
the reprobate in the midst: Nate was not of The Place, not one of the
elect, or he would be happy to join in the toils of the family enterprise.
The pastor announced there would be a meeting after the service where the
family would 'decide' whether Nate should stay or go.

"I started packing my bag," says Nate. "Family councils never contradicted
my dad. He just called them when he wanted everyone else to feel
responsible for something he had every intention of doing, regardless."

After he'd thrown his few belongings together, Nate remembers he dozed off
on his bed, waiting for the verdict. He was awakened by a fist pounding on
his door. It was Jonathon. The two brothers were less than a year apart.

"You have to go,: Jonathon told his older brother. "You have to go
tonight."

The Phelps family scapegoat nodded stoically. He hoisted his bag and
stepped through the door. His younger brother gave him no hand to shake,
no pat on the back, no words of farewell--only silence.

Nate has not seen his father since.

Once, he went back to visit his mom: "It had been years since I'd talked
to her," he relates bitterly. "She'd only see me for two minutes at the
back door. And she kept looking over her shoulder the entire time. I felt
like a hobo asking for a meal."

But Nate, who, like Kathy, had taken the brunt of his father's cruelty and
abuse, would find he could not leave his past behind so easily. When he
drove away that night after his family council, rejected, wounded, and now
self-destructive, Nate Phelps--gratis the pastor--had become dangerous to
himself and his community. Like Debbie Valgos, Nate would now be all the
bad things his father had said he was.

Unlike Debbie, Nate was 6'4" and 280 pounds. And, unlike her, he was just
as inclined to violence against others as he was against himself. He
plunged into a world of drugs, drink, violence, and hooligan friends, and
very nearly accomplished his parents' self-fulfilling prophesy that he
would be the convict of the family.

"When I first left," says Nate, "right away I moved in with some wild boys
living above the VW shop on 6th Street. They had a perpetual party going
there for almost four months. A keg was permanently on tap.

"When I hit that, boy, did I have an attitude. I remember I was real
belligerent and anti-authority."

Ten months later, addicted to speed and crystal meth, without shoes,
penniless, and desperate, the prodigal giant appeared on Mark and Luava's
doorstep only a few days before the couple moved to California.

Haunted by ghosts of his father's hatred, enraged by the memories of his
physical abuse, and emotionally disemboweled by the knowledge his mother
and his siblings had offered him up, an entire childhood sacrificed, to
save themselves, Nate Phelps had become a rider on the storm.

Soon the pastor might have had reason for dancing and clapping his hands
again.

But the pastor's appointed angel and his projected devil knew instantly
they were veterans from the same war. They needed each other. Each sensed
he might be able to redeem his brother: the one of his guilt; the other
from a coffin void of love or self-esteem.

Thus, the former favorite of Fred and back-up mattock-beater was the only
Phelps who could understand and forgive the rage of the family's
designated criminal and black sheep. The 'good' Phelps boy forgave the
'evil' one his impulsive betrayal of the year before, and he invited his
little brother to come to California with them.

Today, Mark Phelps owns a successful chain of copy stores in Southern
California. He and Luava have two children.

Nates manages the largest in the chain. He is happily married, drug-free,
and content. He and his wife, Tammi, are raising four children. Nate still
receives treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and, ironically,
some of the Vietnam vets who receive the same therapy say their year in
hell sounds preferable to his 18 inside the walls of Westboro.

Both brothers say they cringe at the thought of anyone touching their
kids. They know what darkness may yet linger in their souls from their
father's nightmare, and they daily guard against it emerging in their
behavior toward their own children.

Mark and Nate live four blocks from each other in an upscale Orange County
community surrounded by pine forest. Both couples are devout
Christians--though the god the boys worship is now a loving one. And,
after growing up with the Pastor Phelps, not much can rattle them"

Recently, after answering some questions concerning minor details for the
story, Nate announced calmly, "Well, I should get off. I have to pack
now."

Were they going somewhere?

"Yes. For now. The fire is coming down the mountain. It's only two miles
from here,"

"Fire? That's terrible! What about Mark and Luava?"

"Oh, she was packed three hours ago."

The racing blaze missed their homes, (Not the kind of punishment predicted
by the pastor for those he feels have 'gone against' his assembled elect
at the compound in Topeka.)

While the emotional cocktail mixed at the Phelps of Westboro seems
perpetually one part cruelty, one part anger, one part hysteria, and one
part maudlin self-pity, the lasting impression left after hours of phone
conversations with Nate and Mark is one of serenity.

They have the calm wisdom of mariners who have been rescued from a wild
sea. The one saved by a brother's love; the other buoyed up by a teenage
girl's moral courage.

Mark and Nate Phelps have found their peace and happiness. They would like
to help their brothers and sisters do the same, but they have not yet
discovered how to reach them.

And the two brothers, survivors, themselves are not unscathed.

"I'm OK during the day," says Nate. "It's late at night when it all comes
back. I sometimes just sit and there after my family is asleep. You know,
and it comes back. All the feelings of pain, and violation, and outrage.
And I try to deal with it. Then I'm OK again."

Mark laughs. "I've had a recurring dream for years now. I'm out driving
around and I turn up a street and it looks familiar. I can't place it so I
keep driving. Then I see the church and realize where I am. I hot the gas
to get out of there, but the car suddenly dies. Then my father and my
brothers and sisters start coming out. But I can't start the car. I'm
cranking the engine for dear life and it's not catching.

"As they come out in the street, I'm trying to lock all the doors and roll
up the windows...but I forget the driver's door...

"They pull me out. And Daddy says: 'What the hell do you think you're
doing? Were you selling on Prairie Road tonight?'"

CHAPTER NINE

"The False Prophet"

Sometime around 1975, Phelps began to find his option to beat his family
restricted. By then, Mark and Kathy had already rebelled and left, and the
other children were fast becoming adults of not inconsiderable size. About
a year before Nate left, he remembers an incident which must have put the
abusive pastor on notice to find new outlets for his hate.

"One day he was beating mom upstairs," Nate recalls. "He'd been doing it
for some time. Shirley and Margie and I were in the dining room
downstairs, and Margie and I were getting madder and madder. Shirl
wouldn't get mad--she'd always start crying and pacing around whenever
anyone was getting beaten.

"Margie finally went and got a butcher knife from the kitchen. The three
of us went to the bottom of the stairs. But our voices stuck in our
throats. We couldn't call out. None of us. We were so scared."

When the raging reverend chased his wife out onto the landing, he saw
them.

Fred stared down at them: "Get the hell outta here."

Margie held the knife up where he could see it. "You've got to stop this,"
she told him.

The pastor slowly descended the steps.

His children backed up but didn't leave.

For a long moment he glared at them. Then he said quietly: "Fine, you
SOBs." And he turned and went back to his bedroom.

For three weeks after that, Fred Phelps had no contact with his family
except at church. He stayed in his room until it was time to give his
sermon.

After Nate departed the fold in 1976, apparently the pastor began to worry
about the success of his methods. He'd raised a congregation from his
loins, and now they were bailing out at the first opportunity. Fred Jr.,
Mark, Nate, Kathy, Dorotha, Margie, Rebekah, and Jonathon would all leave
home at some point. It was at this point that his wife and daughters
apparently convinced Phelps that, if he wanted his family, he'd have to
stay his hand.

From then on, it was the outside community which more and more would
become the outlet for the pastor's rage.

Nate was coaxed back to the family compound three years later by his
sisters' assurances 'the old man' had changed, that things were better
now, and he wasn't beating anymore. But, as Nate quickly found out, the
pastor still sought total control over his children's private and
emotional lives.

He left for good.

Nate's younger brother, Jonathon, met Paulette when he was still in law
school. She joined the Westboro church and was highly cooperative, though
the pastor frowned on her for not following his path (Paulette has no law
degree.).

Later, when it was discovered they were fornicating, Paulette was driven
from The Place. Jon was allowed to stay.

Though by this time he was a practicing lawyer, all of Jon's adult
privileges were taken away by his father. Members of the church were
assigned to accompany him 24 hours a day to guard against his backsliding
with Paulette. As a hedge against his leaving, each day he was given only
enough money from the common family finances to buy his lunch.

But the damage had already been done. Paulette had conceived.

Living with her parents, abandoned by Jonathan, an object of contempt to
his family, Paulette turned in desperation to the Phelps boys who'd moved
to California. Mark and Luava say they had many a late-night counseling
session over the phone with Paulette while she carried her baby to term.

After their child was born, apparently Jon's girl wanted nothing more to
do with him. But Jon was having second thoughts. Six months after he'd
become a father, he petitioned the court for joint custody and visitation
rights.

According to court records, Jon claimed Paulette would not accept payments
of support, that she had refused him visitation rights, and that she would
not allow him to take their child from her parents' home.

When the couple actually confronted each other before a judge, however,
Paulette saw only Jon, and he only had eyes for the woman he loved and
their tiny daughter. And Fred Phelps with his threats of hell and hatred
of Christmas must suddenly have seemed so very far from the god who had
given them their little girl.

Jonathon deserted the Westboro church and moved in with Paulette's family.
They were married soon after.

By now, it was apparent to the pastor that Mark and Nate's move to
California in 1981 was going to be permanent.

"So, when Jonathon left, my father had lost three sons," says Marks. "At
that point," he adds, referring to his and Luava's long conversations with
Paulette at the time, "my dad decided it might be better to relax his
rules and keep his family than end with an empty church."

Jonathon and Paulette were allowed to return to the congregation with
their illegitimate child in 1988.

Unable since then to either beat and browbeat his family, the Pastor
Phelps seems to have focused instead on his therapeutically malicious law
practice. This is the period, 1983-1989, when he is reprimanded for this
unchecked spate of extortional demand letters, when he eventually
federally disbarred for his wild and vitriolic attacks on three judges,
and when he sues Ronald Reagan over appointing an ambassador to the
Vatican.

Fred's swan song in the federal courts in February, 1989 left him unable
to express his most persistent of urges: to hurt and humiliate other human
beings.

Already prevented from punching up his grandchildren, and now banned from
the barrister's ring, the old pugilist took stock and realized he still
had his fists and his faithful urge to abuse.

Buffalo Fred took his wild ego show out of his house, out of the
courtroom, and into the streets. Within months, he was running for
governor, tramping importantly about the state and churning out position
papers on the general corruption of the Adamic race.

The spotlight, so comforting and necessary to prankster pastor, had
returned.

He only garnered six percent of the vote.

No matter. Nine months after losing the election, Fred Phelps unveiled his
next therapeutic crusade: his left hooks rained on same comparatively
helpless and unsuspecting heads when he opened the "Great Gage Park
Decency Drive"--which quickly escalated into his current death-to-fags
campaign.

To hear the pastor describe his new venture, one feels in the presence of
a Napoleon crossing the river Neiman to invade Russia--two great empires,
the one good, the other evil, about to clash, finally, and to the death.

To read his crusading literature, however, leaves a different impression:
The "Great Gage Park Decency Drive" hovers between vaudeville and the
bizarre. One campaign fax churned out during November of 1993 would seem
to cover both choices.

For vaudeville, the pastor poses a question: can God-fearing Christian
families picnic or play touch football there (Gage Park) without fear of
contradicting AIDS? HELL,NO!" He then describes the enemy activity in
suspicious detail:

"Open fag rectal intercourse in public restrooms, in the rose garden, in
the rock garden, in the theatre, in the rainforest, in the swimming pool,
on the softball fields, on the swing sets, or the train--it's
everywhere..."

And for the bizarre:

In the same fact epistle, Fred to the Sodomites, the pastor reviews his
son-in-law's opus of investigative endeavor, The Conspiracy within a
Conspiracy. For those arriving late, Conspiracy is the privately published
book by Brent Roper, who made the "it will be harder now, but I will
destroy them" attribution to Judge Rogers in Chapter Six.

In the fax, Fred defends Roper's thesis that Truman Capote passed AIDS
simultaneously to both Jack Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe during a touch
football game in the Rose Garden "when a gang tackle went awry".

According to the fax, the CIA later killed both the president and Marilyn
to keep them from infecting the country--Capote's own longevity
notwithstanding.

In any case, touch football seems to be the one thing consistently on
Fred's mind here.

In the midst of his anti-gay campaign, the pastor also ran for the U.S.
Senate in 1992 for Topeka mayor in 1993. He lost both races. Of the two,
his Senate bid will likely be the better-remembered: Phelps, in a great
plains parody of the late senator from Wisconsin, warned the voters darkly
that homosexuals were taking over America, and accused Gloria O'Dell, his
opponent for the Democratic, of being a lesbian.

Unelected after three races, the angry pastor maneuvered to advance his
hate-gays crusade from local TV spots and neighborhood pickets to the
national media. The Westboro congregation traveled to Washington, D.C. to
taunt the Gay Pride March in the spring of 1993.

It was red meat for a sensation-hungry press. Fred and found his rhythm.

Even before then, however, the nine children still loyal to him had
campaigned enthusiastically alongside, picketing in rain, snow, or sun.
Why?

Says Nate: "You known that Lite beer commercial where the guy goes up to
the two other guys and gets them to fight over his comparison of two
incomparable issues ('Tastes great!/Nope, less Filling!)? My dad does
that.

"Deep down, my brothers and sisters know they've been denied the right to
be themselves--free adults--and that combines with all of his abuse and
anger toward them until their rage is uncontrollable inside. He helps them
find a focus to vent that out. And then he steps aside."

Mark agrees: "Everyone is very angry there. That's why they overeat. It's
a very charged atmosphere. All that frustrated energy needs to be
discharged in some form of conflict."

Though this latter observation is almost 13 years old, it still provides
an accurate summation of one reporter's experience who spent six weeks in
daily contact with the family Phelps in the fall of 1993.

Fred has a captive family congregation: their fear of hell and fear of him
still control them, like the elephant's rope. His loyal children have
fulfilled his ambitions rather than their own. They live at his side and
do his work.

And since his rage has become their outrage, a wrath they dare not turn
back on him, Fred's kids have eagerly joined in whenever he has sallied
forth from Westboro to smite the Adamic race.

Margie Phelps admits many in her family have become emotionally dependent
on the death-to-gays crusade:

"A lot of us have been able to work through emotional problems because of
the picketing," she says. She explains the bonding and the sense of goals
have brought them closer and taken each person's focus off their own
personal difficulties.

"It would be very hard for them to give up the picketing now," she
observes, and quotes with some apparent relief the circumstances outlined
by her father for an end to his grim campaign: the return of Jesus; the
capitulation of all homosexuals; "or they kill us. Otherwise it will go
on."

What's important here is the Phelps family has found something they can
all enjoy doing together. And it's helping them to grow and realize more
about themselves.

All except one.

Dorotha, on of the youngest Phelps children, left the compound in 1990.
She was 25 at the time and already an established attorney.

"We were all supposed to get law degrees, stay home, and live happily
every after," she says. "The problem was, I wasn't happy.

"My father's operating mode is one of perpetual warfare. I thought once
he'd been disbarred, it would die down, and he would stop--you know--being
so aggressive. He wrote that book (still an unpublished manuscript)
comparing the courts to the Corsican Mafia...but I guess it didn't go
anywhere.

"And then he started all these other things...

"It's just not going to die down. It's not going to quit. He's such an
egomaniac. He liked to keep things stirred up because he likes attention.
He likes to be center stage. It just wore me out. The constant pressure
there was just too much.

"But," adds Dorotha, who goes by 'Dottie', "despite all his flaws, he's
the leader of the church as well as a father. If they (her family back at
the compound) believe, they also accept him."

The pastor is enthusiastic about his new therapy: "The Bible approves only
of sex within marriage," he insists. "But whoremongers and adulterers God
will damn to hell!

"No premarital sex! No extramarital sex! No divorces, no remarriages--and
for God's sakes--NO ANAL COPULATING!"

(In which case, come the Rapture, Westboro Baptist will still be holding
services.)

Fred continues: "Anytime a famous fag dies of AIDS, we're going to picket
his funeral, wherever it is." He adds he subscribes to the New York Times
because it identifies gays who've died of AIDS.

Phelps is literally giggling now, able to appear on shows like Jane
Whitney, Ricki Lake, and 20/20 and talk dirty to gays.

On top of the verbal abuse the pastor heaps from the television screen, he
claims he's doing gays a favor by disrupting their funerals, outraging
their mourners, and picketing the businesses that employ them. Raising
this kind of ruckus is...well...a bit of necessary bad taste to get the
"good word" out.

Interviewed on KBRT radio in Los Angeles, Phelps was asked: "What about
the Bible advice that Christians are to have the wisdom of serpents and
the meekness of doves?"

To which he responded: "The next to last verse in Jude says we were to
make to a sharp difference in how we are to approach people to win them.
On some, have compassion, making a difference. Others you should save with
fear.

"That means using the authority of terrorizing people about the coming
fires of God's judgement and wrath, as opposed to approaching them with
compassion."

Trouble is, Phelps may have yet to meet the sinner he deems worthy of the
compassionate path.

The pastor has generated most of his notoriety from public outrage at his
desecration of funeral and burial rites. To this, he has a formulaic
response, most recently offered to Chris Bull of the The Advocate in
defense of emotionally brutalizing the mourners for Kevin Oldham, a native
of Kansas City who had found success in New York as a composer:

"Compared to hell and eternal punishment, their (the mourners) suffering
is trivial. If Kevin could come back, he would ask me to please preach at
his funeral, and he say, 'For God's sake, listen to Fred Phelps.' Dying
time is truth time. These poor homosexual creatures live lives predicated
on a fundamental lie, and they die engrossed in the lie. It seems to me to
be the cruelest thing of all to stand over their dead, filthy bodies
keeping the lies going."

Yet Phelps doesn't believe homosexuals can be redeemed, an attitude which
cast his actions, not as salvation-through-fear, but as pointless and
abusive.

Almost any day on the picket line in Topeka, he can be heard announcing to
the occasional passerby who stops to talk: "Deep-dyed fags cannot be
saved. God has given them up."

The pastor seems uninterested when other Christian ministers attempt to
show him differently. One the same KBRT talk show, Phelps intoned: "It's
my position that they (gays) fit in that category of the most depraved and
degenerate of Adam's race. And probably these guys are past hope for
salvation.

"And it was a long time coming to that. I've never seen one such person
converted in 46 years of preaching this Bible."

"I've seen a number of homosexuals come to Christ," protests the
announcer, up to now quite warn to Fred's message.

"I'd like to meet one," says Fred.

The announcer mentions a young man, a reformed homosexual, who, after
'coming to Christ', has established an AIDS ministry that is now
nationwide. "Herb Hall," says the how's host, "is one of the most solid
soul winners I've seen in decades."

They reach Hall by phone at his home in Garden Grove, New Jersey. He
invites Fred to come and see, that there's plenty of gays who turned to
Christ and ceased their sodomy.

"I think it's a put-on," says Fred. He resists the suggestion that Phelps
and Hall confer on what they've learned during their separate campaigns
against homosexuality.

"I'd love to sit down and talk with you, and meet with you," begins Hall.

"We'll have to do that," responds Phelps, "because your story so far is
not convincing, and it sounds very canned and put on to me."

When the announcer again vouches for Hall, Phelps says reluctantly: "I
gotta talk to him first, and I gotta know more..." Then to Hall: "Are you
gonna call me?"

Announcer: "Oh! We've just hung up on him. But we have his number, and
we'll give that to you, OK?"

Phelps: "OK. Thank you. I'm very interested."

But Preacher Phelps never called. So Hall called him. He remembers their
conversation below:

"Pastor Phelps, when Jesus approached the prostitute, all the people who
had surrounded her, He wrote their sins in the dirt. That's why they left
her alone. Unless we show them (homosexuals), love and compassion, and
really comfort them, we'll never be able to reach them."

Hall says Phelps told him he'd never seen a homosexual that had ever
changed, and he doubted that Hall had.

"Pastor, I am a homosexual. I've changed. And I will be in heaven
someday."

According to Hall, Phelps doubted that also.

"So you think it (homosexuality) is the one unforgivable sin?"

Yes, said Phelps.

In an interview with Jim Doblin, a television reporter for WIBW-TV,
Channel 13 in Topeka, Phelps shared a bit more.

If everyone was predestined from the womb, regardless of what they did in
life, asked Doblin, wouldn't there be a homosexual or two among the Elect?

No, Phelps insisted. "Three times within eight verses in Romans, Chapter
1, it says God has given these people up. If the only power in the
universe that can call you to Jesus Christ has given you up, how you gonna
get there?"

In fact, Phelps has shown little interest in getting the "good word" out
at all. His record in this new campaign shows his focus is on ego
dominance, insult, and therapeutic lashing out.

Offers Phelps from the same interview with Doblin: "My ol' dad used to
say, 'you're gettin' people mad at you, bubba! An' if you're determined to
get 'em mad at you, I recommend you just walk up and kick 'em in the
shins--it won't take so long!'

"I believe I finally took my ol' dad's advice: just walk up and kick 'em
in the shins!" The pastor breaks into a big grin: "God hates fags!"

He's obviously enjoying himself.

But why kick them in the shins if they can't be saved? Fred can't answer
that. Because she knows he's not trying to save anyone. For his own secret
reasons, he needs to hurt people, and he's chosen homosexuals.

Reacting to a joint statement condemning his anti-gay activities that was
signed by 47 Topeka area religious leaders, Phelps, in a letter to The
Advocate wrote: "I love it. I'm a Baptist preacher, and that means I'm a
hate preacher."

When it comes to any serious attempt to explore a religious issue via
considered argument and fair rebuttal, however, Pastor Phelps has proved a
no-show, On August 23, 1993, Dick Snider, a columnist for the
Capital-Journal, printed part of the letter from an English professor at
Spoon River College in Canton, Illinois. Farrell Till was a Bible debater,
and he wanted a chance to debate Fred on God's hatred of homosexuals.

By midmorning, the faxes came rolling in at the newsroom and offices all
over the capital: a photo of the pastor, looking pensive and studious at
his desk, and the words emblazoned:

I ACCEPT!

LET'S DEBATE!

Followed by the missive:

"Not since two of my heroes (Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan)
slugged it out at the famous Scopes Monkey Trial at Dayton, Tennessee in
July, 1925, has the issue of the inerrancy of the Bible been properly
debated. If Farrell Till is for real, let's get it on.

"Your newspaper can work out the details and send circulation off the
charts. And your own involvement to date in this historic event will more
than justify your otherwise pitiful existence on this earth as a wayward
son of Adam. Kindest regards. Fred Phelps."

Farrell Till was notified his challenge had been accepted. He immediately
sent the pastor a courteous letter, via the Capital-Journal, outlining his
qualifications to engage in a serious scholarly exchange and requesting
Phelps contact him to work out a compatible date.

Fred forgot.

Though he was reminded several times by both the paper and Till, the
impulsive pastor never remembered to set that date.

By Christmas, Till reported he had inquired by phone or letter five times
and received no response.

Coincidentally, during the same time period, the Capital-Journal had
arranged for a round-table exchange in print: participating with Phelps
would have been Tex Sample, a liberal minister from St. Paul's School of
Theology in Kansas City; Rabbi Lawrence Karol, an old testament scholar in
Topeka; and Scott Clark, a primitive Baptist (old Calvinist) minister from
Fred's own sect, now working on his doctorate in theology at Oxford
University.

Fred would exchange views in print with clergymen of three differing
faiths to avoid the discussion becoming mired in minor sectarian
conflicts.

All four agreed to participate, and all agreed to the tennis format:
Phelps would serve by responding to three questions; the others would
return with comment, and Phelps would bat it back.

To the three questions--Does God hate? Does God hate gays? By what
authority do you judge?--Phelps submitted a brief response.

His turbid theology was quickly returned to him, analyzed as unfounded and
unbiblical--even by the Oxford Calvinist of his own sect.

Now here was a battle of the Titans! Let's get it on!

But again the would-be William Jennings Bryan fled the field, muttering
he'd heard all those false arguments before and couldn't be bothered
refuting them again.

Pity.

All those reprobates out there who've never heard his refutations...it
would be like water to parched souls...

Twice turning tail at the opportunity for his truth to confront publicly
the world's falsehoods...a very odd response indeed for someone who claims
his only aim in his crude, cruel, and vindictive behavior is to get the
"good word" out to a world of stubborn reprobates.

Each time has been offered the chance to present his message in a fair and
sober forum--sans shin-kicking and street theatre--the earnest pastor has
passed.

In fairness, it would be observed that, since his tent emptied that night
in Vernal, Utah, Phelps has preached almost entirely to the converted and
the blood-related. He may find an opinion differing from his own to be a
frightening and flight-triggering experience. Or perhaps the amateur
Biblical erudition gained during that long, arduous summer Phelps spent
between his baptism and ordination failed him when he entered the arena of
professional scholarship.

Whatever the cause, the pastor appears long on antics, insults, and
threats--short on good news the reprobates can use. Of the 12 abominations
listed in the Old Testament, pride in one--homosexuality is not.

"His dad couldn't care less about God or the Bible," says Luava. "He just
happened to embrace that structure to create a framework for himself as
god. What he says, goes. In his mind, and in his life, he is god."

"He's not for anything but Fred," adds Nate. "Whatever it is he has to do
to get attention, he'll do it--"

Mark interrupts: "...He helped himself to any behavior he ever wanted to
have and then left it for others to clean up. He's operating at the level
of a two year-old. My little girl just goes up and shoves someone
sometimes, but she's two. He does not hesitate to do what my little Becky
does, but he does it in adult ways.

"He's completely out-focused and totally high right now. He's got the best
fix: drugs, beatings, all the raging and abusing he's done, all the
political stirring-up he's caused, nothing compares to what he's doing
now."

Nate adds: "And each time it seems he has to ratchet it a little higher.
Eventually it could end in tragedy for a lot of people." He shakes his
head. "My father likes to hurt people. And he needs to hate them. Why, I
don't know. But you can be sure of one thing: he'll always do it with the
Bible.

"They'll give us the fags," says Margie, referring to Topeka's generally
hostile response to the pastor's message, "it's the 'God hates' part they
can't stand. The notion that God hates humans is rejected so deeply by
most people--that's what everyone is so angry about."

If the strange case of Fred Phelps were, in fact, a doctrinal and not a
mental health phenomenon, it would revolve on two issues: whether God
hates some souls regardless of their character or actions and whether he
hates homosexuals most of all.

Absolute predestination--the theory that some people are bound for heaven
before they are born, while others have a one-way ticket to hell--best
focuses the beliefs of Westboro Baptist and its basilisk leader.

"It goes like this," says Fred, shifting into his preacher voice, talking
slowly and emphasizing every syllable, "the everlasting love of God for
some men and the everlasting hatred of God for other men is the grand
doctrine that razes free will to the ground.

"Hate in the deity is not a passion like it is with humans, you know. It
is a purpose that is part of His nature and His essential attributes."

The Bible is chock full of hate, says the pastor. "From all eternal ages
past, God has loved some of Adam's race and purposed to do them good, and
he's hated the rest and purposed to punish them for their sins."

Attributes of God linked to hate, anger, wrath and punishment are used
two-thirds more often in the Bible than attributes linked to love, mercy,
pity, long-suffering, gentleness and goodness, he claims

"You can't be a Bible preacher without preaching the hatred of God, the
wrath of God. It is a fabrication, this modern Christianity, that says
good old God loves everybody."

Implicit in all this talk of predestination is the assumption that Fred,
at last, is going to heaven.

Yet the Bible, as it interpreted by predestinists, says the elect will not
be revealed until the Judgement Day. Tacitly, the pastor's congregation
counts him early in that tiny group and looks to him for a sign they'll be
a part too.

Not only is Phelps without Bible authority to designate them elect, he may
not be elect himself. His ministry could be that of a reprobate.

A summary of some of the objections raised to the pastor's philosophy of
hate by Sample, Clark, and Karol is listed below. The text of the original
exchange is contained in the appendix.

1) It rejects a 3000 year-old rabbinical interpretation of the Jacob
and Esau story in favor of one of his own.

2) It mistranslates and falsely equates the words for the anger and
wrath of God that so often occur in the Old Testament with a divine hatred
of mankind.

3) When the Bible does speak of God hating, God is described as hating
the act or the sin--not the sinner.

4) The speaker in the book of Psalms does profess hatred for the
sinner--but the voice is that of the psalmist, not of God.

5) Phelps pointedly ignores the emphasis in the New Testament on love
and forgiveness. One may find lichen growing on the floor of a redwood
forest--but that does not make it a moor, not so long as the landscape is
dominated by the giant trees.

The prophet of hate grins broadly when asked how it feels being the target
of so much hatred himself now:

"You guys don't seem to understand what motivates me." He chuckles. As
usual, a Bible verse serves as his answer. "Blessed are ye when men shall
hate you and revile you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for
my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad: for great is your reward in
heaven."

Phelps seems giddy, His words roll off his tongue in a Mississippi drawl
tinged with excitement.

"I love them to death," he says of those who criticize him. "If they
weren't doing that, how am I going to get all that 'great is your reward
in heaven'? If you are preaching the truth of God, people are going to
hate you. And they can't often or always articulate why, and so they fall
back on specious, insincere and false reasons for why they hate you. And
you swim in a sea of lies. And I love it!"

Phelps seems to lead a euphoric life, Today he is wearing his trademark
running shoes, running shorts, and shirt and tie with a nylon running
jacket, sleeves rolled up to his biceps. He has just returned from a
noontime picket in downtown Topeka.

"If the call was good, it never goes away," he chirps, referring to the
1946 revival that called him to preaching. "I have a hard time getting to
sleep some nights from pure happiness."

A wide smile blossoms on his windburned face. His eyes gleam and glitter.
It's hard to imagine so much happiness taking root and growing out of so
much hate.

"If my father's going to become a spokesman for the Christian Reform
Movement, it's important Christians realize who he really is," states
Mark. "What worries me most is my brothers and sisters may see him as a
Christ-like figure.

"He has nothing to do with Christ. He is a sad, sick man who likes to hurt
people. For a long as I've known him, he has been addicted to hate."

Even a cursory glance at the pastor's most recent published material would
seem to beat this out. The following random excerpts from his faxes can't
be defended as "scaring 'em to salvation". They are mean and hateful and
nothing more:

(December 2, 1993) Next to the headline, "FAGS: GOD'S HATE SPEAKS
LOUDEST", is the text: "Fag Bishop Fritz Mutti...confessed his sins to
ANTICHRIST CLINTON: He raised 2 fag sons for the Devil; they died of AIDS.
GOOD RIDDANCE!"

(December 9, 1993) "Court Clerk JOYCE REEVES dying of cancer? Couldn't
happen to a better dyke...May explain why she's super bitchy to the help.
N.Y. Fag Son TODD's arrived, looking like AIDS on a stick. Patronize his
Westboro Shop and go home with AIDS?"

(December 16, 1993) [When Topeka Police Sergeant, Dave Landis, only 45
years-old and with a wife and children, was suddenly paralyzed by a
stroke, Phelps found time to gloat.]

"You don't scare us, Officer Landis! Not even before the Lord turned you
into a limp vegetable!

"Westboro Baptist will picket fag cop Landis fundraiser...Fag cop John
Sams and his FOP (Phaternal Order of Phags) will try to raise $12,500 to
unscramble the brain of fag cop Dave Landis...Forget it, guys! When God
scrambles eggs, man can't unscramble 'em. Westboro Baptist has picketed
this evil Son of Belial at the VA hospital for 4 months now; Westboro
Baptist will picket his funeral to give him a proper send-off to hell..."

Many of Fred Phelps' former adversaries and law school classmates have
gone on to become luminaries, while he has slowly dissolved into a
disbarred lawyer and failed preacher, supported by his abused children.
The more his own life slips into the periphery, the more stridently
abusive he becomes.

Pastor Phelps is one of many false prophets to come who will seek to
exploit the loss of faith, soul, and identity in North America. As a
society that has lost its path in a steaming, sensual, violent marsh of
mindless, me-first, frantic consumerism, America is entering its dark
middle age stupified by television and content to let its values be
formed, not by saints, heroes, and visionaries, but by default, by
advertising and market forces appealing to the basest urges in each of us.

Our culture has grown childish and narcissistic, slothful and irrational.
With the winter of our nation will soon follow the wolves--fierce white
toothed beasts come to trip the flesh of our indolence.

Fred Phelps is one of them.

And in our chaos and confusion, the false prophets will claim to lead us
into a new day. But by this mark we shall know them: no matter how bright
their vision, always it will demand someone or group be punished before a
new day can come.

The dark angels will promise a bright tomorrow but ask for blood today.

Fifty years ago, looking ahead to our time, the poet, Yates, would lament:

"The best lack all conviction and the worst are filled with a passionate
intensity."


FINIS

--
<a href="http://www.infinet.com/~dionisio">My Web Pages</a>

And the Thought of the Moment (tm) is...

In 1787, when the framers excluded all mention of God from the Constitution,
they were widely denounced as immoral and the document was denounced as
godless, which is precisely what it is.

Eric Fierke

unread,
Jun 6, 1997, 3:00:00 AM6/6/97
to

On Mon, 02 Jun 1997 00:32:03 GMT, kla...@ix.netcom.com (Rev. Billy
Wade Phelps) wrote:

>On 1 Jun 1997 21:58:24 GMT, eho...@usa.net (Eric Hoffer) wrote:
>
>>This is the story of a nearly disbarred former lawyer name Betty
>>Phelps (married to Fred Phelps, Jr.) who does nightmarish day care in
>>her home. Only Phelps brats need apply otherwise the 'day care' might
>>get turned in as child abuse. See today's installment (Part 5) of
>>"Addicted to Hate" and learn about the Phelps Family Values.
>

>What kind of family values is there in having another person's penis
>shoved into your rectum of putting another person's penis into your
>mouth. You are a very foul little Son of Satan Eric and it is you not
>us given to hate. You can only make up lies about our family because
>you can't defend your own filthy hellish habits.

>Billy Wade Phelps

And it is you who is, rather than taking the energy to
disprove any of his comments, is directly attacking him instead. and,
NO, we are not the same person.

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