By Zeke MacCormack
San Antonion Express-News
September 18, 2007
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA091807.01B.monkdead.33ca603.html
Samuel A. Greene Jr., whose charisma carried him from being a land pitchman to leader of a monastery outside Blanco, was found dead Monday, just days before facing up to 180 years in prison for allegedly violating his probation.
Autopsy results are pending on Greene, 63, who was found dead in his bed at his home on the grounds of Christ of the Hills Monastery, which shut after a July raid by officers investigating claims of sex abuse and mail fraud.
Blanco County Sheriff Bill Elsbury said Greene's death bears "all the appearances of suicide," but he stressed that officials must see autopsy results from the Travis County medical examiner before making a ruling.
Blanco County Justice of the Peace Terry Carter said "Father Moses," Greene's aide, reported that his spiritual leader took medications at 11 p.m. Sunday.
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"Father Moses did not question what Mr. Greene was doing because he was his superior," Carter said. "Mr. Greene told Father Moses to discard the pill bottles."
No suicide note was found at the scene, said Carter, who made the death pronouncement at 9:12 a.m.
Carter said weeks may pass before he can rule on the manner of death.
Greene first drew attention in the 1970s as an exuberant salesman on local television. In 1981, he founded the monastery, which gained national fame with claims that a Virgin Mary painting there wept tears of myrrh.
The monastery later drew critics over claims that its members sexually abused novice monks, smoked marijuana and defrauded worshippers by applying oil to make the painting "cry."
Greene pleaded guilty in 2000 to indecency with a novice monk and took a 10-year probation deal. That came after a jury sentenced senior monk Jonathan Hitt to a 10-year prison term over claims by the same youth.
But Greene faced new legal exposure recently after admitting misdeeds to a probation officer — which also implicated four fellow monks.
In secretly recorded conversations, Greene reportedly admitted molestations dating to the 1970s, talked of smoking marijuana and deviant sexual contact since his plea, and confirmed authorities' suspicions that the monastery's weeping painting was fake.
Greene's attorney, Mark Stevens, argue unsuccessfully in court to suppress the admissions, which he said Greene was required to provide as a registered sex offender.
"I know there are a lot of people saddened now to hear of his passing away, and I'm one of them," he said.
Based on Greene's statements, sexual assault indictments were returned against Greene's longtime followers, Hitt, Hugh B. Fallon, William E. Hughes and Walter P. Christley.
At a hearing set for Friday, Assistant District Attorney Cheryl Nelson said she planned to ask District Judge Dan Mills to revoke Greene's probation and sentence him to the maximum 20-year term on each of his nine indecency counts.
"It was shocking to me that he might take his own life instead of standing up and facing the charges against him," she said. "I'm sorry and regretful that the victims don't get to relate what happened and that he cheated them of that opportunity to make him listen."
Greene's death is not expected to affect another hearing Friday when James B. Wright Jr., a former monk who says he was abused, is seeking rights to the 105-acre monastery to satisfy a $1 million judgment entered this year against Ecumenical Monks Inc., the nonprofit group Greene set up that owns the site.
Although state officials had persuaded Mills to dismiss Wright's claim to the land, Wright's attorney, Mark Long, hopes to revive it. The state has moved to seize the property.
"It's a tragic end to a tragic life that affected a lot of people badly, and it's all sad to me," Long said of Greene's death.
Contact: zeke@express-news.net.
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