Photograph Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Each day Beast/Escambia County Sheriff's Workplace/Wikimedia Commons
Billy Summers had solely identified Kent Hovind for a few days when Hovind informed him in regards to the convicted youngster intercourse offender who typically visited Hovind’s Christian amusement park.
They had been in Hovind’s automobile, choosing up provides for Dinosaur Journey Land (DAL), the creationist theme park that Hovind operates in a quiet pocket of Alabama. Hovind spoke a few longtime good friend who had achieved time for battery and committing lewd acts on kids underneath the age of 14. Hovind claimed the conviction was a sham, and that the good friend was truly being persecuted for his work exposing the New World Order. However Summers was alarmed.
“In my head, I used to be like, ‘Nicely, I’m caught out in the midst of Alabama proper now, using together with him, so I can’t say nothing,’” Summers informed The Each day Beast.
In interviews with former employees, and recordings from inner DAL conferences, individuals near the theme park expressed concern about Hovind’s cavalier angle towards crime on the compound.
Hovind is a controversial young-Earth creationist who preaches that Earth is lower than 10,000 years outdated and that dinosaurs rode on Noah’s ark. Behind his literalist interpretation of the Bible is a extra artistic interpretation of the regulation. Hovind beforehand served 9 years in jail for tax avoidance. Whereas he was behind bars, feds seized and offered an early iteration of DAL that Hovind operated in Pensacola, Florida. The park featured a zipline, a “fossil dig pit,” a creationist museum, and a tricycle racetrack. Slightly than relaunch the Pensacola park after his launch from jail in 2015, Hovind opened a brand new DAL in Alabama.
However DAL’s woes now go far past Hovind’s tax troubles, which shuttered the primary park.
Since Hovind launched his newest incarnation of DAL in 2016, two wives have left him—one citing monetary considerations with the park and the opposite as a result of he assaulted her. Volunteers and staffers have additionally stop DAL over a variety of grievances. Amongst their considerations are repeated visits to DAL by Hovind’s intercourse offender good friend, who allegedly molested a baby on the park; the loss of life by drowning of a unique youngster in a pond used for baptisms; Hovind’s assault of his now-ex spouse; allegations of theft of ministry cash by a Hovind colleague; the arrest of that colleague for a drugged-out alleged carjacking; a late-night proof removing operation by greater than a dozen church volunteers; and the deadly capturing of a canine close to DAL.
“The property is beautiful, but it surely’s the within; the within of it's what’s darkish,” Julie Shunk, Hovind’s former secretary who lived and labored at DAL for 3 years, informed The Each day Beast. “Lots of people don’t know this. The satan comes as an angel of sunshine, too.”
An Evangelist With a Checkered Historical past
Lots of Hovind’s flock reside in cabins and campers on the 140-acre DAL property in Alabama’s rural Conecuh County. The theme park options animals, playgrounds, a “science heart,” a swimming-and-baptism pond, and statues of dinosaurs, which Hovind and different creationists consider co-existed with people mere hundreds of years in the past. (“The satan, I believe, is utilizing the dinosaurs to show girls and boys the Earth is thousands and thousands of years outdated, and it’s propaganda,” Hovind informed a neighborhood information outlet. “It’s not true in any respect.”)
A few of DAL’s residents and staffers started as vacation-goers. Mark Stoney, a former DAL employee, first got here to the compound for what he anticipated to be a quick go to.
“I used to be solely gonna keep the afternoon, however one way or the other [Hovind] satisfied me to remain and put me to work on some initiatives, which was form of what I used to be all in favour of doing,” Stoney informed The Each day Beast.
Kent Hovind
Photograph Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Each day Beast/YouTube/Wikimedia Commons
He lastly left after three days and returned to his mother and father’ home, the place he expressed his need to reside and work at DAL for a month along with his younger daughter. His mother and father objected, however after a 15-month custody battle, Stoney and his daughter moved to DAL the identical weekend he received her again.
Hovind’s checkered historical past was a matter of public report. A well known tax protester who as soon as boasted of not submitting a tax return “in 30 years,” Hovind has had repeated run-ins with the regulation. The incidents ranged from his refusal to safe permits for his authentic Florida-based DAL, to a 2006 conviction on 58 expenses associated to tax evasion. His then-wife Jo additionally spent a 12 months in jail for the scheme. They later divorced.
Different, extra violent allegations adopted him. In 2002, he was arrested for alleged assault, battery, and housebreaking on tenants in a home he owned. The case was later dropped after an alleged sufferer determined to not pursue the fees. “The scenario was bodily, spiritually, emotionally, and financially draining,” she wrote on-line on the time. In an interview with The Each day Beast, Hovind denied the allegations, accusing his accuser of tried extortion.
However Hovind remained fashionable in some Christian circles, the place he’s higher identified for the many years of creationist kids’s materials he’s printed underneath his “Dr. Dino” model. “My 5 children had been elevate[d] along with his movies and I believed he was superb!” Hovind’s second spouse, Mary Tocco wrote in an open letter to Hovind’s fourth spouse in 2021. “I needed a ‘Man of God’ who I may belief.”
Tocco left Hovind in 2017. In a Fb publish explaining the break up, Tocco described her more and more annoyed efforts to make sure her husband and DAL’s funds had been “above-board.” “It wasn’t lengthy earlier than I started noticing sure issues that didn’t appear so as to add up. My listing of considerations began slowly, after which started to develop,” she wrote. She claimed that when she introduced her considerations to the DAL board, she was rebuffed. (Reached for remark, Tocco directed The Each day Beast to her Fb statements.)
Hovind denied that DAL’s bookkeeping was out of order, and accused Tocco of attempting to “take over” DAL’s board. “There’s nothing mistaken right here,” he stated. “We've got CPAs that do all of our stuff yearly. Our trustees maintain monitor of all that stuff. There’s by no means been any unlawful dealings.”
Cindi Lincoln, Hovind’s third spouse, additionally stated she was initially charmed by the charismatic preacher. She first encountered Hovind via his video sequence whereas she was instructing preschoolers. After ending the sequence in 2016, she discovered Hovind was searching for employees at his new DAL. She packed her baggage and moved from California to Alabama, the place the theme park was nonetheless underneath development.
“I began out in a tent and ended up Mrs. Hovind,” Lincoln informed The Each day Beast. She married Hovind in July 2018. “By early 2020, I used to be experiencing large purple flags.”
DAL operated for years in a half-open state, receiving guests and volunteers earlier than formally launching in 2018. The park doesn't have legal responsibility insurance coverage, Hovind confirmed to The Each day Beast, describing the park’s coverage as “enter at your individual danger.” And inside two years of opening, the park could be the scene of a tragedy.
In March 2020, a visiting household’s 5 younger kids had been swimming in DAL’s pond, which doubles because the theme park’s baptism pool. Stoney, who was additionally on the pond along with his daughter, recalled a commotion when one boy gave the impression to be struggling within the water. Adults rushed into the pond and pulled the kid to shore. However within the tumult, one other boy, 7 years outdated, went lacking. The boy’s father “ran again into the lake and tripped over his boy,” Stoney recalled.
The kid was pronounced lifeless on the hospital, the place DAL employees declare Hovind demonstrated one thing lower than a bedside method.
“Kent Hovind is strolling across the hospital, passing out ministry playing cards saying, ‘Come to Dinosaur Journey Land, we’ll provide you with excursions. We’re free. All the things’s free. Come see us,’” recalled Shunk, Hovind’s then-secretary.
“And I’m like, ‘Dr. Hovind, you’re alleged to be sitting with the daddy, having sympathy for him and praying with him, not passing out your dinosaur playing cards so individuals can come… That’s simply psycho to me. I don’t know what else to name it.”
“I do vaguely do not forget that,” Hovind stated, when introduced with Shunk’s account. “And sure, I most likely did that. My enterprise card has the plan of salvation. They’re truly gospel tracks. So I do this in all places I'm going. I’m attempting to get individuals saved. I’m an evangelist.”
Anybody claiming he acted inappropriately “should have another form of axe she’s grinding. That’d be my guess,” Hovind stated, including that the boy’s father “holds no grudge in anyway. The dad loves our ministry. Matter of truth, he paid to have the gazebo constructed on the finish of our dock in honor of his son.”
‘I Ought to Have Known as the Police’
In the meantime, Hovind’s third spouse, Cindi Lincoln, was experiencing grave considerations about her new husband. (Amongst different issues, Lincoln and Hovind are presently locked in a dispute over whether or not she loaned DAL the proceeds from the home she offered in California. Lincoln confirmed The Each day Beast a contract stipulating that she would obtain $1,300 a month for 20 years. Hovind denies that DAL entered right into a contract.)
“I found there was a coverup occurring, and so they tried to silence me,” she stated. “They'd me shunned. And in the end, mainly, he simply stored doing unusual and imply issues to me till, mainly, I fled.”
The coverup, she stated, concerned long-simmering allegations of drug use and pedophilia at DAL—the latter involving a very good good friend of Hovind’s named Chris Jones.
Court docket data present a sample of allegations made in opposition to Jones by boys. Whereas taking care of two younger boys from his church in 2001, one of many boys received mud on his clothes. “Whereas [the 7-year-old] was bare, [Jones] put him over his lap and hit him on his buttocks,” a court docket discovered.
In 2004, Jones befriended three different boys, aged 9, 11, and 12. “Defendant [Jones] informed them earlier than they watched the film, they needed to play strip poker,” a court docket resolution reads. “Defendant produced a deck of playing cards and defined the sport to the boys. He dealt the playing cards, informed the boys who received or misplaced every hand, and directed the losers to take off some garments. The boys did as instructed. Alex M. remembered he and Anthony M. stripped all the way down to their underwear. Anthony M. remembered solely himself getting bare. E.G. remembered the opposite two boys stripped him bare and took off their very own shirts. In the course of the sport, E.G. observed defendant’s ‘dick was getting bigger and you would see it via his pants.’”
Jones was convicted of three expenses of lewd acts on kids for the strip poker sport, and an act of battery for the nude spanking. Jones was acquitted on different expenses, together with two extra counts of lewd habits towards kids within the case of two different boys, and exhibiting porn to a minor. (An early model of the felony criticism additionally included a rely of possessing youngster pornography, though that rely was dropped in an amended criticism.)
Jones didn't reply to repeated requests for remark.
When Billy Summers visited DAL as a visitor in 2017, he discovered of Hovind’s shut friendship with Jones after mentioning that he lived in Aiken, South Carolina. Hovind replied that he knew a person from the realm who typically visited DAL. Unprompted, Summers stated, Hovind started explaining that Jones was a convicted youngster intercourse offender, however that the fees had been trumped up, and that Jones had merely been enjoying strip poker with kids.
Hovind “stated one thing like, ‘however he [Jones] stopped at his, their underwear, in order that they did nothing mistaken,’” Summers recalled.
Chris Jones
Photograph Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Each day Beast/South Carolina Legislation Enforcement Division/Wikimedia Commons
After returning residence from DAL, Summers remained perturbed about Hovind’s self-proclaimed friendship with Jones. He referred to as Hovind along with his considerations. A recording of the decision, reviewed by The Each day Beast, reveals Hovind portray Jones as a persecuted sufferer of the New World Order.
Jones received a job at “Bohemian Grove. That’s the place they make all their plans for the New World Order,” Hovind says on the recording. “He received a job there and video taped a bunch of stuff and so they needed him in jail.”
A topic of fascination for early-2000s conspiracy theorists, Bohemian Grove is the location of an annual meetup for the wealthy and highly effective. (Throughout a 2021 DAL assembly, a recording of which was reviewed by The Each day Beast, Jones claimed to have supplied footage of the Grove to Infowars founder Alex Jones, who he says used it in a documentary. Alex Jones’ assistant declined to state whether or not the Infowars boss used Chris Jones’ footage, as a result of, “We don’t discuss to Demtards.”)
Summers was not satisfied by Hovind’s clarification and made a YouTube video about his considerations. Hovind quickly referred to as him and demanded the video’s removing, voicemails reveal. Jones additionally referred to as Summers, blaming his arrest on the New World Order, and downplaying his conviction.
“My precise crime? You wanna know what the technical crime was?” Jones requested on a voicemail, reviewed by The Each day Beast. “It was throwing an 11-year-old boy within the pool in his underwear. That’s my b-i-i-i-g intercourse crime.” Jones went on to notice that “even when I'm responsible, hopefully the blood of Christ works. A minimum of you’re not questioning that. The blood of Christ works, man, we’re all forgiven and cleaned up.”
Amongst DAL residents, Summers’ video contributed to a creeping consciousness of Jones’ previous. By November 2019, when Jones made one in all his occasional visits to DAL, residents had been uneasy.
Shunk, Hovind’s then-secretary, recalled Hovind coming into her workplace and explaining that Jones was harmless however that folks had been “freaking out.”
“I'm going exterior and yeah, individuals with children there are taking their children off of the property,” Shunk stated. “Persons are tremendous mad.” One father “informed his spouse to seize all their children, put them of their cabin. Mark Stoney grabbed his youngster, went off campus. So did many different mother and father there with kids. They left.”
Requested about Jones, Hovind informed The Each day Beast that Jones had achieved nothing mistaken, both in his felony case or at DAL. “He’s come to go to right here twice, I believe. By no means spends the evening,” Hovind stated.
However Jones did spend the evening close to DAL in the course of the November 2019 go to. “Oh, that’s proper,” Hovind recalled when reminded of the incident. “They did spend one evening right here.”
“They” had been Jones and a younger boy, whose title The Each day Beast is withholding. Shunk, who greeted them on arrival, famous that they didn't look like associated. Jones was white. The 11-year-old touring with him was Black. Uneasy, Shunk went to make two beds for the guests in a dorm-style visitor room. Hovind intervened, she stated.
“No, no, no, no, no,” she remembers Hovind saying. “They’re gonna go keep in the home subsequent door.”
Requested whether or not he overruled Shunk, Hovind informed The Each day Beast that “I don’t recall that in any respect. We've got 25-some cabin areas right here. I gotta go for my Bible research now.” When he returned from the group Bible research, Hovind stated Jones had stayed off-campus. Hovind handed the telephone to a different DAL resident who stated Jones and the boy had stayed in a close-by home that was being managed by a DAL elder.
The home was simply off DAL property, and has been owned by a sequence of DAL associates. Shunk and her husband had briefly stayed there, and had been almost completed shifting out. The one factor left within the constructing was a queen-sized mattress. She stated Hovind needed Jones and the boy to share the mattress.
“I stated, ‘Dr. Hovind, they will’t do this. It’s inappropriate,’” Shunk stated. “And he’s like, ‘It’s superb. I’m the boss. I’m in cost. Don’t fear a few factor. I received every little thing dealt with. You simply go residence and be together with your husband. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ I stated, ‘Wonderful,’ and I left. And so, to at the present time—I’m gonna be trustworthy with you. I ought to have referred to as the police.”
Requested whether or not Jones and the boy shared a mattress, Hovind informed The Each day Beast that he didn’t recall. “I used to be not within the room with them,” he stated, including that the kid “could be very emotionally unstable, I perceive, and it wasn’t on Dinosaur Journey Land property. But when [child] stated, ‘Hey I’m scared, can I sleep with you?’ I don’t know that that occurred however I don’t see—Chris is just not a pedophile, if that’s what you or anyone else is driving at.”
(Nobody The Each day Beast spoke to made any comparable allegations in regards to the youngster’s emotional state. He “is without doubt one of the finest children I do know,” his mom informed The Each day Beast. “I simply occur to be his mom.”)
DAL residents discovered little about Jones’ go to on the time. However for some, his presence was a ultimate straw.
“I had informed Kent, you already know, it is a a lot larger drawback that we want to have the ability to cope with,” Stoney stated. “If Chris comes again, I will be leaving.”
When Jones returned in January 2021, Stoney stored his phrase. The day after Stoney’s departure, Hovind held a gathering with DAL residents and Jones in an try and allay considerations about Jones’ previous. A recording of the assembly seems to substantiate some allegations about Jones’ exercise at DAL.
“Did you see Chris in mattress with a child?” one DAL resident asks a ministry elder within the recording.
“I’ve seen Chris rassling with a child, which I didn’t suppose was applicable, as a result of when there’s any slightness of that [sex offense convictions], you don’t do this,” the elder responds. “I’m fairly certain I did. And I informed Chris, no extra of that.” The person goes on to clarify that “I used to be mad at Chris as a result of I received up, I stated, ‘Chris, what’s he in your mattress for? You’ve received these expenses? What the heck are you in mattress with a child for?’ Utterly dressed.”
“The best way individuals say issues,” Hovind interjects, “that ‘he was in mattress with a baby.’ There’s a technique to make it sound worse than it's.”
When DAL members complain that the scenario regarded dangerous in gentle of Jones’ convictions, Hovind argues, “That’s Chris’s resolution and the child’s resolution. How individuals right here react to that's their resolution. He’s received a proper to wrestle with a child if he needs and also you’ve received a proper to say, ‘I’m not getting round Chris.’”
Later within the assembly, a DAL secretary complains that Jones is harming the theme park’s status with households. Throughout Jones’ earlier keep, a mom of six kids had referred to as a few go to, however explicitly requested whether or not Jones was current. “I modified the subject as a result of I didn't wish to lie however then I didn’t wish to inform the reality as a result of—I didn’t know what to take action I modified the subject,” the secretary says. “She realized that I did that and she or he stated, ‘That answered my query. We received’t be coming there anymore.’”
After some dialogue, a ministry elder proclaims that, going ahead, “if someone calls this ministry and says, ‘Is Chris there?’ simply merely say, ‘The elders have gotten collectively, they’ve investigated it totally, he’s welcomed right here and we take all precautions for anyone visiting right here.’”
However the matter was removed from closed. Stoney, newly faraway from DAL and upset about Jones’ presence, started searching for the kid who’d shared a mattress with Jones in late 2019. By summer season 2022, Stoney made contact with the boy’s mom.
In a Fb Messenger name that Stoney shared to YouTube in June, the boy’s mom claimed that Jones touched her son’s genitals via a paper towel in the course of the DAL journey.
Reached for remark, the boy’s mom informed The Each day Beast that Jones had been her boss at a Enhance Cellular retailer, and that he typically volunteered to take two of her seven kids to the mall. When he supplied to take her son to DAL, she agreed, reasoning that Jones had by no means posed an issue to her kids earlier than. However she started to have misgivings after the boy arrived on the theme park the place, she stated, Jones and Hovind referred to as and requested for permission for her son to share a mattress with Jones.
“I stated, ‘No, that’s not OK,’” she informed The Each day Beast. (In the course of the 2021 assembly with DAL members, Jones defended his sharing a mattress with the boy by claiming that he had referred to as the boy’s mom, who he stated had granted permission.) 5 days after her son returned from DAL, she stated, he informed her he was confused about what he skilled on the park.
“I stated, ‘What occurred with you? Your face is sort of pale and you're feeling like you'll want to say one thing however you’re scared.’” Her son informed her that Jones had touched his privates with a paper towel, and that he was additionally scared of his whole lack of a reminiscence of 1 evening within the room.
In June, shortly after connecting with Stoney, the boy’s mom filed a criticism with the sheriff in Aiken County, South Carolina, the place Jones lives. A redacted model of the police report, obtained through a Freedom of Info request, states that the mom referred to as the sheriff’s workplace and said that Jones “pulled [redacted] vict.’s pants down alongside along with his underwear and touched his non-public space with paper towel. R/O [responding officer] has no additional info right now.”
If police performed any additional investigation, it doesn't seem within the FOIAed model of the report. On Aug. 16, the case’s standing was modified to “closed.”
Hovind denied data of the police report. “I’ve by no means heard of that report,” he informed The Each day Beast. “Needed to accuse him of one thing to place him in jail due to his political stance.”
But in a voicemail uploaded to YouTube by a Hovind acquaintance, the preacher seems to acknowledge a felony criticism. Within the voicemail, Hovind complains that the boy “is urgent expenses in opposition to Chris Jones. This entire drama isn't gonna stop, brother. Simply utterly ignore them,” Hovind says. He says one thing vague, then provides “a bunch of morons.”
Hovind informed The Each day Beast that he didn't keep in mind the voicemail or its context. “I don't,” he stated. “However you already know, what occurs in the remainder of the world, I can’t management. And nothing occurred right here. If Chris did something inappropriately—initially, I don’t consider that for a second—but when he did, or possibly it’s an allegation, then you'll want to discuss to him, not me. It didn’t occur right here and we now have nothing to do with it.”
Stoney and the kid’s mom stated they've spoken with investigators in regards to the case.
“I ain't gonna say no ‘allegation’ as a result of my son don’t don't have any motive to lie,” his mom stated. “In any respect. In any respect.”
Medicine, a Late-night Raid, and a Useless Canine
As DAL members fought over the presence of Chris Jones on the journey park, one other scandal was roiling the neighborhood—one which involved DAL’s tech man, Steve Lynn. Lincoln and former DAL resident Jodie Pittenger informed The Each day Beast that Lynn tampered with a drug check that Hovind required for compound residents. When Lincoln and Stoney reported their considerations to Hovind on the time, they are saying they had been accused of fomenting rebel in opposition to the DAL chief, which set off the deterioration of Lincoln’s marriage.
Reached through telephone, Lynn declined to remark, asking to reply questions through electronic mail. He didn't return solutions to questions submitted through electronic mail.
Nonetheless, by 2021, Lynn had admitted to drug use in court docket data. In August of that 12 months, Lynn was arrested for alleged automobile theft. Whereas disputing the cost in court docket, Lynn filed an affidavit blaming the incident on momentary drug-fueled delusion.
”I affirm that on the time and date of the offense,” Lynn wrote, “I used to be underneath a drug-induced Necessity or Duress, mistakenly believing that my grownup son (who lives in Missouri), had one way or the other come to Alabama and was within the Monroeville Walmart, desperately needing my assist, and I deserted my $45,000 Jeep with the keys in it—and operating, within the Marvin’s car parking zone—the place I took one other man’s truck (possible valued round $10,000), that had its keys in it, and drove it to the Monroeville Walmart and parked it, the place I had ran inside and that this false (however very actual to me on the time), psychological duress was nonetheless ongoing when and the place I used to be arrested inside Walmart, and I didn't resist the officer’s arrest.”
Audio recordings from a DAL assembly shortly after his arrest, reviewed by The Each day Beast, reveal Hovind acknowledging Lynn’s drug use. “Steve tousled. He received again into medication. No query, he blew it,” Hovind tells congregants who specific concern about Lynn’s arrest. He goes on to clarify that, “due to the drug he was on, he was hallucinating, he thought the cops had been after him, so he didn’t get in his automobile, he received in one other automobile and took off.”
After Lynn’s arrest, Hovind despatched followers to filter Lynn’s home. Trevor Gifford, a former DAL resident, informed The Each day Beast that he was on campus that evening. “I used to be leaving there in per week so I wasn’t invited to the plunder however I do not forget that evening very properly,” Gifford wrote through textual content message. He continued that “I didn’t see them go away however I did see them return to DAL with the trailers filled with stuff from Steve’s home.”
The late-night operation left some DAL residents questioning in regards to the raid’s legality. Throughout a gathering, DAL residents pushed Hovind on whether or not they had been legally allowed to take away objects from Lynn’s residence, particularly as a result of some would possibly belong to Lynn’s non-DAL shoppers.
“If he works for 15 different corporations, how have you learnt all of the stuff was CSE’s?” one DAL employee says on the recording, in reference to Hovind’s ministry, Christian Science Evangelism.
One other audio recording by former DAL carpenter Jeff Gubser, reviewed by The Each day Beast, reveals Gubser elevating considerations in regards to the raid. “This stuff are legally questionable—like, cops questionable,” Gubser tells Hovind on the recording.
“Like what?” Hovind replies.
“Like being over at Steve’s. We’re clearing out his home together with your signal, your telephone quantity on the facet of that van. Do you not suppose these southern individuals discuss? You don’t suppose they see his face within the image [a mugshot of Lynn in the newspaper], then they see your van exterior of his home? Doc, you’ve gotta begin making higher choices.”
Hovind confirmed to The Each day Beast that he had despatched DAL employees to filter the home. He gave the telephone to a DAL resident who stated they’d emptied the constructing as a result of, attributable to hallucinations, Lynn thought police “had been gonna go in there and ransack the place.”
Former DAL members additionally accuse Lynn of stealing ministry cash and capturing a canine to loss of life.
The morning after Lynn’s arrest, Hovind convened a DAL assembly, stated Gifford, who attended the gathering. In the course of the assembly, a staffer who’d pushed Lynn residence from jail informed the group that, in the course of the experience, Lynn had confessed to embezzling “tens of hundreds of dollars” from the ministry. (Requested in regards to the alleged crime, Hovind stated Lynn had admitted to utilizing a ministry bank card to “purchase issues that he actually shouldn't have and didn't have authorization to. However I believe he’s made most of that up. I imply, he’s repented and given us again some issues.”)
The IT employee additionally eliminated money instantly from a donation field, Shunk claimed. “I used to be within the science heart, giving the tour,” she recalled. “Steve Lynn pulls up in his automobile, drives proper as much as the doorways, will get out, goes inside the science heart, unlocks the donation field, takes a wad of money, shoves it proper in his pocket, will get in his automobile and leaves.”
Shunk didn’t wish to interrupt the tour and make a scene in entrance of tourists. However after the tour, she took her considerations to Hovind. “Dr. Hovind says to me, ‘Julie, Steve can do no matter he needs to do,’” she stated.
(Hovind informed The Each day Beast that “I don’t know that it occurred, and I definitely would by no means say that.”)
Pittenger and her husband additionally accused Lynn of killing their canine, a hound named Bagel. The couple, at odds with some DAL residents, had by that point pooled sources with one other couple and moved off campus to a home throughout from Lynn. Bagel steadily visited Lynn’s home to see his canine, to Lynn’s chagrin, Pittenger stated.
After one such go to, Lynn texted Pittenger and her husband that Bagel had wandered onto his property, and that he’d returned the hound to Pittenger’s home. Pittenger discovered the message odd. She and her husband had been doing work within the yard all day, she stated, and hadn’t seen Lynn come by with the canine.
They are saying they discovered Bagel’s bullet-riddled corpse on the facet of a highway close to DAL the subsequent day. When Pittenger and her husband accused Lynn, he denied the allegation. He produced safety footage from his home, exhibiting him holding Bagel by the collar—main her, he stated, to his truck to drive her residence. However the footage was filmed hours after Lynn texted about dropping off Bagel, Pittenger claimed, and hours earlier than the canine was discovered lifeless.
“When you drove from his yard to our yard, it will take lower than a minute,” Pittenger stated. “When you walked him, it'd take 5. However the size of time that it took him within the video to load Bagel up within the automobile and reappear again in his yard, going by the headlights on his automobile, he was gone 10, quarter-hour.”
On the time of Bagel’s loss of life, Lynn was renting a house from Lincoln, who requested him to maneuver out in summer season 2020. Hovind agreed to have Lynn vacate the property by July 1 that 12 months, she stated. Lynn stayed in the home. “By Dec. 23, I filed an eviction,” Lincoln stated.
Lynn left the home in January 2021, however not earlier than stripping it to the studs. “He stole my washer and dryer and took each fixture out of the wall. The thermostat, the telephone jacks, the lights. He took the backsplash off the kitchen wall. He took the kitchen sink,” she stated, including that an electrician later surveyed the harm and informed her that one of many severed wires (from a stolen dishwasher) “may have killed someone.”
Lincoln sued Lynn and received an roughly $10,000 judgment in February 2022, after Lynn failed to indicate up at court docket. He has not but paid her the cash, she stated.
Lynn is presently awaiting trial for his automobile theft arrest. Regardless of claiming in court docket data that “I shouldn't have a felony conviction historical past, on this state or another state,” he has twice pleaded responsible to theft in Missouri, the place he additionally has an open warrant, a clerk for the state’s Second Judicial Circuit Court docket confirmed to The Each day Beast. (The warrant regards Lynn’s failure to look in a case of allegedly fraudulently utilizing a credit score/debit system.)
Hovind claimed to be unaware of the warrant when DAL residents requested about it in a gathering, recordings present. Throughout that assembly, he additionally defended eradicating Lynn from the drug rehabilitation facility he entered after his arrest.
“Why did you're taking him out of rehab?” a lady asks tearfully on the recording.
“I took him out of rehab to go get his laptop computer up right here, to get the passwords and stuff,” Hovind replies.
Hovind informed The Each day Beast that Lynn now works in logging, not at DAL. They'd lunch “a pair weeks in the past.”
The Ex-Mrs. Hovind the Third
Regardless of the loss of life of a kid on the park and accusations that his good friend molested one other child on his watch, Hovind nonetheless operates DAL and makes common movies on YouTube, the place he has greater than 215,000 subscribers. These followers assist comprise what ex-DAL residents stated was a gentle churn of latest supporters.
In the meantime, Hovind is dealing with his personal felony case. In late 2020, he body-slammed Lincoln of their residence, sending her to the emergency room, based on a safety order. Hovind additionally took an audio recording of the incident. The disturbing audio contains loud bangs and Lincoln’s screams whereas Hovind states, “What are you doing, Cindi? Why would you leap on me and seize me, Cindi?”
Lincoln stated Hovind later distributed the audio as proof for his declare that Lincoln is bipolar. In 2021, he was convicted of home violence within the incident. He denies that he was abusive, and is interesting the ruling.
Whereas the court docket case pends, Lincoln is attempting to recoup cash she misplaced on the mortgage she made to DAL, which constituted most of her retirement financial savings. The church stopped repaying the mortgage after she left Hovind, she stated. She has been unable to search out the mortgage’s signatory (a Hovind supporter) to serve him authorized papers; the statute of limitations on a lawsuit expires this spring. As a substitute of retiring as she’d hoped, Lincoln, now 60, has re-entered the job market.
One other former DAL resident, James Duncan, went public with comparable allegations in July 2021; he had been a DAL member in early 2021, attending the assembly with Jones. “I wish to make public report Kent Hovind has clearly defrauded me entered right into a belief with me within the title of D.A.L. and broke that belief costing me most likely over 100 thousand dollars,” Duncan, whose image nonetheless seems on the DAL website, wrote in an anti-Hovind Fb group.
The Each day Beast was unable to confirm the allegation as a result of Duncan died of suicide in late 2022. Hovind and DAL trustees informed The Each day Beast that no such belief existed.
Duncan’s widow informed The Each day Beast that she “can not say come what may that there was a ‘formal’ belief. My husband had a knack for following conspiracy theorists,” she stated, including that she “tried to discourage his transfer down there.”
She stated that her husband possible had roughly $100,000 in belongings that he moved to DAL. He was unable to retrieve his belongings when he left the compound, which set off a bout of “melancholy,” his widow stated.
“My husband lastly noticed all of them for the kind of individuals they're,” she stated, “and couldn't recover from the massive mistake and disappointment of shifting his stuff there.”