LFC members generally renounce contact with non-cult members, and Mrs. Buhrman—or Sister Anahata, as she came to be known—was no different. She abandoned her sixteen-year-old twin daughters to the care of her sister, Amelia Kelly, a middle school teacher in Elm Park.
A source inside the LFC, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told me Mrs. Buhrman was happy with her life on the commune. “Sister Anahata exuded nothing but love and contentment. She was an example to us all.”
But all that was shattered earlier this month when a podcast entitled Reconsidered: The Chuck Buhrman Murder burst onto the web. The podcast claims to be reviewing the case from an impartial, third-party perspective, but some argue it is the same sensationalist faux news that caused Mrs. Buhrman such anguish after her husband’s death.
Poppy Parnell, the host of the podcast, is a self-proclaimed “investigative journalist” and former webmistress of a true crime blog. The now-shuttered blog was frequently criticized for inciting witch hunts and smearing the reputations of innocent parties. Records show that Ms. Parnell and her blog were sued twice for defamation; both times these suits were settled out of court.
One might wonder how a blogger like Ms. Parnell was able to land such a high-profile platform, but that inquiry ends with who has been providing the funding for and producing Reconsidered: Werner Entertainment Company, emphasis on the word entertainment. These are the same folks that brought you The True Life Diaries of a Meth Addict and Pedophilia: The Inside Story. Werner Entertainment has been roundly criticized for taking serious topics and reducing them to spectacles.
But its origins and motives aside, everyone can agree that Reconsidered has been a huge success. The program has over ten million downloads to date. Thousands of threads, posts, articles, and webpages have sprung up to discuss the case. All of this has been great news for Ms. Parnell and Werner Entertainment.
It was less great news for Mrs. Buhrman. According to my LFC source, shortly after Reconsidered began airing, reporters and curiosity-seekers began appearing on LFC property. This alone was surprising: the LFC guards the location of its commune quite closely. Potential LFC members must meet a representative in San Francisco and undergo a screening process before being permitted to make the journey to the Northern California commune. That these individuals found the location speaks to an extremely high level of devotion to the project, nearing on obsession. This influx of outsiders disrupted the flow of life on the commune, and, my source tells me, destroyed the sanctity of certain important events.
My source recalled one specific event—an “aging” ceremony, which celebrates the arrival of a teenaged girl to womanhood—that was disrupted by a group of eight or ten teenagers. These self-described Reconsidered fans snuck into the ceremony disguised in ritual robes they had stolen from the laundry, and attempted to record the ceremony on their smartphones. When they were exposed, they reacted violently, striking LFC members and making specific threats against Mrs. Buhrman.
According to my source, the incident at the aging ceremony was a low point for Mrs. Buhrman. “Ever since the resurgence in interest in the death of her husband, Sister Anahata had been acting depressed. She began spending all her time alone in one of the solitary huts—places where our sisters and brothers can go if they need to meditate to seek clarity, or if they are suffering from a contagious disease—and refused to take part in mealtimes. She was wasting away.”
Then yesterday morning, Mrs. Buhrman was found hanging from a tree. As far as my source is aware, she left no suicide note and had not mentioned her plans to anyone.
Her death has hit the LFC community hard. “Sister Anahata felt that sadness and tragedy had followed her throughout the conventional world,” my source said. “That’s why she came to us at the Life Force Collective: to break the cycle of despair and begin living life in the light as she was intended. She’d worked hard to leave her past behind and was living a life of joy. When an influx of darkness from the outside world began dragging her down, we should have noticed. We should’ve been more attuned to our sister’s well-being. But we were too absorbed in the struggle to maintain our way of life in the face of recent scrutiny. We were distracted, and we let her down. Her blood is on our hands.”
The LFC is taking responsibility for Erin Buhrman’s death. But how much of that responsibility should be shouldered by Poppy Parnell and her bosses at Werner Entertainment? Or those of us who have greedily gobbled up each new podcast? Or clicked excitedly over to Reddit to swap theories? Or spent time Googling the players in this real-life drama? Maybe this fevered consumption of a nearly thirteen-year-old tragedy was too much for her. Maybe we all have a little bit of blood on our hands.
chapter 5
I arrived at O’Hare travel-weary and with a headache. It had been ten years since I had last stood in its buzzing halls, heartbroken and desperate. On that occasion, I had left early in the morning, before Aunt A or Ellen was awake, crying intermittently the entire drive. By the time I reached the airport, I had no tears left. I had a pulsing headache from sobbing, my throat was sore, and my eyes were swollen and aching. Clutching a boarding pass for a one-way ticket to London purchased with the credit card Aunt A had given me for emergencies, and the passport I had obtained for a spring break trip to Mexico that had never come to fruition, I dialed Aunt A’s number.
She answered the phone sleepily, and I felt a pang of guilt.
“Aunt A,” I said, the words coming out cracked.
“Josie?” she asked, her voice quickly sharpening. “Are you all right?”
“No,” I choked, a fresh sob working its way up through my chest. “I’m not.”
“Are you hurt? Where are you? Tell me what’s wrong.”
“You can ask my sister what’s wrong,” I spit, more venomously than I had intended. “I’m not going to talk about it. I just want you to know I’m not coming home.”
“Calm down. What did Lanie do?”
Hearing her name threatened to send me into a new set of hysterics, but I swallowed it as best as I could. “I’m not— I can’t. I’m sorry. But I want you to know how much I love you and how much I’m going to miss you. I’ll write when I can—”
“Josephine Michelle,” Aunt A interrupted, her voice vibrating with emotion, “you do not abandon me like the rest of this family.”
“I have to go, Aunt A,” I whispered. “The car is in the long-term lot at O’Hare, okay? I’m sorry.”
The worst part was that I wasn’t sorry, not really. Not enough, at least. Aunt A was the kindest woman I’d ever known, with a patience and capacity for forgiveness that astounded me, and I should have at least felt guilty about hurting her. But I was so consumed by pain I was unable to consider anyone else’s feelings.
And so I powered down my cell, cutting off Aunt A’s protests, and then withdrew the largest allowable cash advance on the credit card, purchased an overpriced thriller at the airport bookstore, and waited to begin my new life.