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	Monk's Final Pill-Popping Is Detailed By Zeke MacCormack Express-News September 19, 2007 http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA092007.03B.monkdeath.305ba23.html Before mixing a cocktail of painkillers and anti-anxiety drugs late Sunday, admitted child molester Samuel Greene Jr. had been drinking heavily and was very depressed by the prospect of being ordered to prison at a hearing Friday. The account of "Father Benedict's" final hours came from his caretaker, Anthony Allen, who found Greene's body Monday morning at Christ of the Hills Monastery and reported the suspected suicide, Blanco County sheriff's investigator W.T. Smith said. Allen, aka Father Moses, said Greene rebuffed his questions about the large number of pills he'd poured into a cup about 11 p.m. Sunday. "He asked, 'Isn't that too many?' and Sam Greene gave him a look like he knew what he was doing," Smith, quoting Allen, said Wednesday. He said Allen told authorities Greene became angry, then directed him to throw away six empty pill bottles, which Allen did. "He said he didn't question anything Mr. Greene told him to do," said Justice of the Peace Terry Carter, who was awaiting autopsy results Wednesday. It was unclear how many pills Greene may have consumed, Smith said, but the bottles later retrieved from the trash at Greene's trailer included four labeled diazepam and one, hydrocodone. One had no label. Greene once before had tried to overdose on pills since investigators descended on the hilltop monastery outside Blanco in July 2006, according to Allen's statements to authorities. The raid resulted in the arrests of Greene, 63, and four other monks on sex abuse claims by former novice monks who lived there in the 1990s. The first trial in those cases is set for next month, and each defendant has pled not guilty. Of more immediate concern to Greene was a hearing Friday where prosecutors planned to present evidence he'd violated a plea deal struck in 2000. Greene pled guilty then to nine counts of indecency with a child, but avoided a criminal conviction by agreeing to pay a $10,000 fine and serve 10 years' deferred adjudication. Assistant District Attorney Cheryl Nelson moved to revoke the deal in June, saying Greene had admitted violating its terms by engaging in deviant sex with another monk, smoking marijuana, writing letters to a convicted murderer in prison, and hugging a teen boy at a funeral. Also, she said Greene committed fraud by applying "tears" of oil to a painting of the Virgin Mary — seized as evidence in the 2006 raid — which had drawn hundreds of thousands of visitors and lots of donations since the monks claimed it miraculously began weeping in 1985. "He was given every conceivable chance to turn his life around and, based upon all of his actions just since he pled guilty, he did not deserve to live freely in our society," she said. Nelson planned to ask District Judge Dan Mills on Friday to sentence Greene to the maximum term of 20 years on each of the nine indecency counts. With Greene dead, the state will ask Mills on Friday to dismiss all cases against him. No funeral plans have been set for Greene, who opened the monastery in 1981 after a career as a real estate pitchman. zeke@express-news.net
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