with their impressive new minister. Drumheller had secretly videotaped an angry confron-
tation between himself, Rexrode and Thomas in a church office. It stemmed from a Sunday-school discussion about the fate of the soul after death. Drumheller wound up snap- ping “You’re a liar!” at Rexrode, and the two talked about each other’s wives, the tape shows. “Be very careful,” Rexrode warned the minister, jabbing a
finger at him. Drumheller retaliated a few days later, accusing the elders
of ignoring a 1987 set of bylaws and falsely telling the local court that the church had voted them to serve as trustees. He also showed his allies an edited version of the confrontation between himself and the elders. “For many years, this congregation has been held captive
under the control of Gary and Robert as elders, and by their family hierarchy,” Joan Knight, a church member would soon write to the court. “Finally our congregation has some- one to fight for us and stand with us to restore our church to the order in which it was intended by Scripture. ” She referred to Thomas and Rexrode as carrying out the
“work of Satan.” Thomas and Rexrode countered that Knight and
Drumheller’s other allies who were critical of them consisted of just a handful of church members, primarily newcomers, who had been unduly influenced by Drumheller. The elders tried to explain to their fellow members that,
according to their interpretation of scriptures, they alone were to manage church business. When the elders filed the court documents saying there had been a church “meeting” to vote in the new trustees, they meant only they had voted on the issue, not the congregation. Before they could explain this to the church, the elders said, Drumheller had them stripped of their positions and turned the church against them. Thomas and Rexrode learned of the church coup when
they discovered the church bank accounts had been cleared out. They frantically got the new bank to freeze the accounts, and fired Drumheller with a hand-delivered letter. But he ig- nored it, saying they had no authority, and stayed put in the parsonage. It was midsummer, and Bill Drumheller held sway over
the tiny church.
took over,” Rickel said. “I was unruly. … I started reeling off the murder charge, this fraud charge. I don’t know if they heard what I said or just noticed the manner I said it. It’s kind of forward to go in there and tell everyone that the minister is a convicted murderer. Jaws dropped.” Harlow, co-chair of the church board, was sitting beside
E
Drumheller. Harlow was unfazed, he recalled in an interview. “I turned to Bill and said, ‘Are you a man of repentant heart?’ He replied, ‘Yes.’ I looked back at Shane and said, ‘What’s your problem?’ ” Harlow said the revelation was “nothing but a character tear-down” and had “nothing, nothing” to do with church business. Most of Drumheller’s supporters, after their initial shock, agreed. “The attitude was, ‘You’re just a troublemaker,’ ” Rickel
said. Rexrode and Thomas were aghast. Drumheller, as if by
magic, actually had more support than before. The elders thought the treatment they had received was
even more galling because the private investigation had re- vealed that the murder conviction was apparently only the biggest of Drumheller’s transgressions. It turned out that the new pastor’s résumé was pocked
with omissions and half-truths — leading the elders and their supporters to believe that Drumheller was not just a man who had tragically once lost his temper and repented, but a man of poor character through and through. There was the fraud conviction and the alleged extra-
marital affairs. Drumheller’s résumé stated that he had left Bumpass’s church in Chicago over a theological dispute about playing instruments during worship services. When told that the minister — the man who’d helped him get out of prison — said it was over an adulterous affair, Drumheller responded. “That’s his story.” When later told that Jim Karas, the woman’s husband, also had said it was over the affair, Drumheller declined to comment. The résumé also listed that Drumheller had received his
master’s in divinity degree from “Rochville University” in “Rockville, Maryland.” Drumheller, in an interview, said he
vents turned uglier the next week in the fel- lowship hall. Rickel stormed into a meeting Drumheller was holding with his new church board. “I let them get about three words out, and I
o death with him so many times. run and hope he didn’t find you.
Beat him, his Brother anD his mother
”
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