Alice Lundgren, wife of cult leader Jeffrey Lundgren, was scheduled to begin working in a San Diego doctor's office the day after she, her husband and teen-age son were arrested and charged in the ritualistic killings of an Ohio family, a federal agent said Friday.
Agent Jim Stathes, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said a doctor called his office Monday to say that he had hired Lundgren as a receptionist. She was supposed to report to work on the morning that newspaper headlines nationwide reported the capture. Stathes declined to identify the doctor.
Jeffrey D. Lundgren, 39, Alice Lundgren, 38, and their oldest son, Damon, 19, were arrested Sunday at a National City motel room. The family is charged with participating in the murders of a family of five in Kirtland, Ohio, near Cleveland. Investigators believe that the victims were killed execution style in a religious sacrifice.
On Friday, Alice Lundgren's attorney told reporters that her client was going to waive extradition Tuesday and return to Ohio, and that she was cooperating with the investigation.
Thirteen cult members were indicted in the killings. On Wednesday, Kathryn R. Johnson and Daniel D. Kraft Jr., the last two suspects sought by authorities, were captured in North San Diego County, near the Cleveland National Forest.
Johnson and Kraft refused to waive extradition at a Friday court hearing. The two male Lundgrens also are fighting extradition.
An investigator familiar with the case said that Alice Lundgren told agents after the arrest of a weapons cache that her husband had in a storage locker. One federal source said that her decision to cooperate may have been influenced by an extramarital relationship that Jeffrey Lundgren was allegedly having with Johnson, who is from Holden, Mo.
One cult member told investigators that Jeffrey Lundgren, who called himself a prophet and founded a renegade cult, killed at least one of the victims. They were shot with a .45-caliber revolver. The murders were committed in April in a barn on a 15-acre farm owned by the cult. An informant in Kansas City, Mo., told ATF agents of the killings on New Year's Eve.
Federal investigators said survival training and guns were part of the cult's religious teachings. The killings were part of a plan for spiritual cleansing, which would prepare the cult for its trek into the wilderness, investigators said.
