Interesting news coming out of Kansas City. Seems a young man, Tyler Deaton recently buried his wife, Bethany. While everyone believed Bethany had committed suicide, this story was about to unravel in a big ugly way.
Three days later, investigators say, 23-year-old Micah Moore would go to police and uncork the terrible secrets that allegedly occurred over several months at a Grandview home where Deaton and other members of his religious group lived.
Witnesses told of a clan of young adults making sex part of their religious experience, of men in the group sexually assaulting Bethany over months, and of Deaton’s role as their “spiritual leader.”
But Moore’s darkest admission, according to court records, was that Deaton feared Bethany was about to reveal the group’s secrets.
Moore confessed that he had murdered Bethany and tried to make it look like suicide, and, according to court documents, he said Deaton told him to do it.
This article chronicles a fascinating journey from mainstream christian activity, slowly spiralling into insanity.
By his senior year at Southwestern, 2008-2009, Deaton had had enough of the sanctioned campus organizations.
He told his members who still associated with the other groups that it was time to make a choice.
Quite typical of people who desire a “closer walk with the lord.” I remember having to make this “choice” more than once during my life. This group took that “closer walk” to extremes beyond all imagination.
Friends and family, already reeling from the false news that Bethany had killed herself, now had to fathom so much more.
Bethany was sexually assaulted over a period of months while drugged with someone else’s prescription anti-psychotic, witnesses in the house told authorities. This was happening, the witnesses alleged, in a period of time that male members in the house were involved in sexual relationships with Deaton, one saying it was part of a “religious experience.”
The statements unfolded with Moore allegedly saying that people in the group feared Bethany was about to tell her therapist about the assaults, and that he killed her with the plastic bag over her head at Longview Lake.
He did it, his statement to detectives said, because Deaton told him he knew Moore “had it in him to do it.”
The last sentence is particularly sad.
“It’s like they believed they were going into a storybook,” she said. “They were going to be equipped for the end times. For them it was heroic.”
Highly recommended reading. And if you dare peek into Deaton’s mind, here’s his personal blog.
