SWAMI BHAKTIPADA (1937-2011)—also known as Kirtanananda Swami—was the charismatic and highly controversial Hare Krishna guru who established in 1968 what became the largest Krishna community in the United States: New Vrindaban in the northern panhandle of West Virginia. The son of an Upstate New York Baptist preacher, Bhaktipada (born Keith Gordon Ham) in 1966 met A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977)—the Gaudiya-Vaishnava guru from Calcutta who founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). Keith became one of Prabhupada’s first American disciples and in September 1966 was given the name Kirtanananda. Less than a year later, in August 1967, he became Prabhupada’s first sannyasa disciple and became known as Kirtanananda Swami.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Kirtanananda Swami was recognized as a key leader of the Hare Krishna movement and, after Prabhupada’s death in 1977, became a “guru” in his own right. In 1979 he adopted the honorific name “Bhaktipada.” At New Vrindaban, Bhaktipada presided over the construction of the ostentatiously-lavish Palace of Gold, billed as “America’s Taj Mahal”—a marble and gold memorial shrine for Swami Prabhupada, dedicated in September 1979—which reportedly became the second-most popular tourist attraction in West Virginia.

Gold, Guns and God, Volume 3, covers a ten-year span from 1973 until 1983. During this period, due to the construction and completion of Prabhupada’s Palace of Gold, the New Vrindaban community was dramatically transformed from a primitive, often unsanitary, rural farm village of a few dozen people who used horses and oxen for plowing fields and hauling firewood, into a bustling, wealthy and popular center of Hindu pilgrimage inhabited by several hundred devotees who used automobiles, tractors, bulldozers, dump trucks and computers. Hundreds of thousands of tourists reportedly visited the Palace each year, and this helped bring about an increase in revenue and renown.

Despite the inexorable progress of the community during this decade-long period, there were several unfortunate and serious setbacks. In June 1973, the temple was attacked by a small posse of men armed with a shotgun (some claimed the men also carried pistols and automatic weapons). The inmates (residents) of New Vrindaban were inconvenienced also in 1976, when a West Virginia college professor died from a virulent strain of hepatitis contracted at the community, and the state governor ordered the community quarantined to contain the spread of the infection. State police set up roadblocks which prevented travel to and from the commune.

High points, on the other hand, during this period include the third and fourth visits of the ISKCON Founder/Acharya A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada to the community, in 1974 and 1976 respectively. These visits were a source of great inspiration and pleasure for the Brijabasis (residents, or inmates) of New Vrindaban. The terminal illness during the summer of 1977 and the death in Vrindaban, India, on November 14th, of A. C. Swami Prabhupada, were incredibly sad and depressing times for all ISKCON devotees. Kirtanananda Swami played an especially important role in the final pastimes of the ISKCON Founder/Acharya, during which his affection and love for his spiritual mater was revealed to all.

The September 2nd 1979 dedication of Prabhupada’s Palace of Gold, an incredibly joyous event for all the Brijabasis, is described in detail, and the remainder of this volume delineates the rapid growth of the community and the establishment of a veritable Hindu place of pilgrimage complete with a guest house, restaurant, gift store, rose garden, and parks. On the surface, Swami Bhaktipada’s leadership at New Vrindaban seemed remarkably successful, but underneath, something was eating at its roots, and this would be exposed in due course.

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The 1986 murder of Hare Krishna devotee Steven Bryant (Sulochan dasa) was arguably the darkest moment in the fifty-one year history of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness—a new branch of the Chaitanya-Bengali-Vaishnava religion founded in New York City in 1966 by an Indian spiritual teacher and guru, His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977). A mere nine years after the disappearance of this beloved spiritual father, one of their own was hunted down and assassinated. This brutal killing was achieved through a cooperative effort by “spiritual” leaders, senior managers and hit men enforcers from West Virginia, Ohio, and Southern California ISKCON temples.

The murdered whistle-blower had discovered many secrets and threatened to reveal to the world the immoral acts and criminal dealings of a set of self-appointed, illegitimate successors to Swami Prabhupada: a corrupt oligarchy of new ISKCON “gurus.” He had also, perhaps foolishly, advocated using violence against the gurus to evict them from their posts. ISKCON leaders took his threats seriously, and they hunted down and assassinated the passionate reformer. How did the peaceful, shaven-headed, saffron-clad Hare Krishna devotees regress from their blissful activities of chanting, dancing, and selling incense in the streets to this?

The author, himself a former ISKCON devotee, probes deeply into the disturbing direction of a new religious movement. In this book, he exposes the danger of philosophical errors and deranged devotion that practically ensured that bloody tragedy would eventually occur. The author has engaged in years of painstaking research by poring over tens of thousands of pages of trial transcripts, newspaper and magazine articles, ISKCON publications, and confidential ISKCON documents, while also interviewing dozens of eyewitnesses. His effort culminates in a thoroughly-engaging and extremely well-documented thesis exposing the hidden inside story of the conspiracy to murder Steven Bryant, including its genesis, development, blunders involved in it, execution, cover up, as well as a stunning aftermath after the deed was done.

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