Shawano - Five years ago, Avraham Cohen had become a large, if largely unseen, presence in this small city at the edge of the North Woods.
He already had carved out a striking career over the previous three decades. A nuclear engineering student-turned spiritual leader, he had attracted a group of followers who, former members say, faithfully obeyed him in areas of their lives as large as whom they would marry and as small as which brands of groceries to buy.
Formerly known as R.C. Samanta Roy, before that as Rama Behera, and simply called "Brother" by his followers, he also was an educational benefactor, the founder of a school near the village in India where he'd been raised.
By 2006 he had become arguably the biggest name in Shawano, thanks to a flurry of activity on an entirely new front - business.
Subsidiaries of the namesake Dr. R.C. Samanta Roy Institute of Science and Technology Inc., of which he was president, had amassed an array of ventures: A gift shop, a fudge-making operation, two hotels, three gas station/convenience stores, a multimillion-dollar racetrack, apartment buildings and about 20 pieces of commercial property.
Most of it had been accumulated over a couple of years, prompting nervous questions in Shawano about a group that kept largely to itself and had long been a subject of local rumor and suspicion. Some wondered if Cohen would take over the whole town.
Then, almost as quickly, the problems began mounting - foreclosure, receivership, bankruptcy. Creditors got three Minnesota gas stations owned by an institute subsidiary and two apartment buildings in Shawano. The racetrack, a professional-caliber facility for high-powered go-karts and motorcycles, was forced into receivership. Revenue at the hotels plunged. If there had been a grand design, it seemed to be coming unglued.
But the institute kept its Shawano gas stations after a planned sheriff's sale was canceled. And while it lost the Minnesota stations, an entity run by the institute's CEO recently contracted to buy one of them.
Over nearly four decades of self-made ministry, Avraham Cohen has fashioned himself into a strong leader, retained the fierce loyalty of a core of followers and withstood critics' accusations of psychological domination and physical abuse. He's been nothing if not resilient.
Cohen hasn't talked to reporters in many years, not that they haven't tried. From abductions of his followers by would-be "deprogrammers" in the 1970s and early '80s to the commercial expansion and bitter battles with local government in the last decade, there's been plenty to write about.
But while Cohen hasn't spoken to the media, a flurry of bankruptcy and civil court cases in recent years provides a glimpse into the business affairs of the organization that bears his name. And former followers increasingly are talking publicly about what they describe as a closed society of believers overwhelmingly dominated by Cohen and his evolving religious vision.
Former members of his group say they've put in countless hours of free labor at his houses in Shawano and suburban Baltimore, driven hundreds of miles just to pick up his favorite produce, bought the cars he directed them to buy and purchased property at his instruction.
Over the years the "brethren," as they call themselves, have helped expand Cohen's ranch-style house north of town into a headquarters complex of more than 11,000 square feet - most of it basement level - masked by thick pines and huge tarpaulins.
Six of the unpaid directors of the Samanta Roy Institute, an educational nonprofit that operates the school in India, have personally guaranteed more than $4 million of the debt of institute subsidiaries since 2005. Cohen's followers have helped establish and run those for-profit businesses, in some cases staffing them as volunteers, something that sits ill with competitors who have to pay their help.
The faithful - they once may have numbered a few hundred - have maintained their allegiance through the changing theology of a group that once was called The Disciples of the Lord Jesus, but shifted toward what former members describe as an idiosyncratic version of Judaism.
They've stood firm amid allegations of physical abuse, psychological domination and deliberate alienation of children from parents - allegations they, and some former members, have flatly denied.
They've weathered intermittent incidents of hostility that over the decades have ranged from vandalism and petty harassment up to, in one case, shots being fired into Cohen's home.
And in recent years, they've fought a running battle with Shawano officials, particularly Mayor Lorna Marquardt, whom they view as the heart of a vast, persecuting conspiracy that extends to banks, utilities, the media and judges from Minnesota to Delaware.
Cohen might not have settled in the Midwest, and Shawano, if not for Julaine Smith.
The now 71-year-old minister, who did not respond to several requests for interviews, comes from Kishoreprasad, a village in eastern India too small to appear on even a detailed map of the country. He went to college in India, then came to the United States, enrolling at Columbia University in New York City in 1964 to study nuclear engineering. His name was Rama Chandra Behera then. He changed it to Rama Chandra Samanta Roy in 1990, a few years before the founding of the institute, and changed it to Avraham Cohen in 2007.
He attended Columbia for one year, receiving no degree. But there, he later told followers, a transcendent vision overthrew his Hindu beliefs and set him on a new path. As Nancy Ritland, a follower of Cohen from 1974 to 2007, tells it: "He says the Lord Jesus appeared to him in the form of a yellowish gold light . . . and said to him, 'Rama, if you want to follow God, follow me.' "
He heeded the call.
But first he had to leave the United States to renew his student visa, and opted to do it in Jamaica, said Lois Loomis - Smith's sister. Smith was in Jamaica editing a religious magazine. She and Cohen married in October 1966 in a Lutheran church in St. Charles, Minn., the bride's hometown. Loomis was matron of honor.
The couple first lived with Julaine's parents, then went to India, Loomis said. But by the early 1970s, Cohen was back in the Midwest, preaching in evangelical and nondenominational churches.
It was a good time to deliver a new message.
The social upheaval of the '60s had set the stage for a blossoming of alternatives to traditional religion - from generic Jesus Freaks to the Children of God, the Divine Light Mission and various charismatic expressions of mainstream faiths.
"A lot of people in that period, young people, turned to religion hoping that God would bring about the social and political changes that they had failed to achieve," said Stephen Kent, a sociology professor at the University of Alberta who studies new and alternative religions.
Amid the cultural ferment, Cohen brought a sort of East-West synthesis and what appeared to be unusual insight and power.
"All this emotion, all this heart, these tremendous things," Ritland said, describing his appeal. "You just never heard of it: This Hindu who turned to the Lord. Wow. We were just swept off our feet."
And there were the miracles.
Ritland said that since childhood she had endured a painful foot problem that sometimes brought her to tears. But as she sat with a small group listening to Cohen in a Rochester, Minn., living room in the early 1970s, she said, the preacher declared:
"'I have a vision of a black crow sitting on someone's right foot. Who has problems with their feet?'
"I raised my hand. . . . He said, 'Put your own hand on your own foot.' And he spoke in tongues really loud. And my foot was perfect. Absolutely perfect."
Besides Minnesota, Cohen preached in places such as Iron Mountain, Mich., and Green Bay. In late 1973, he bought a house outside Shawano, a city of several thousand on the Wolf River. For the brethren, it became a destination for weekly pilgrimages.
Some followers were from northeastern Wisconsin or Upper Michigan, but many lived and worked in southern Minnesota, about five hours away. Former member Steve Ritland - he and Nancy married after both had left the group - described the weekly routine like this:
Finish work Friday afternoon. Get the wife and kids into the car for the 250-mile trip to Shawano. Telephone Cohen for instructions.
"We'd have to call: 'Brother, we're coming. Which way should we come?' " Steve Ritland said. "That was the protocol."
Cohen then would direct their route.
According to the accounts of former members, he arranged marriages; directed career paths; barred consumption of peanut butter and Italian food; instructed them on the correct way to peel a banana; laid down rules such as no-hands-in-pants-pockets; and dictated the women's appearance: long, dark skirts; full blouses buttoned to the neck; long hair tied in a bun.
He told people what types of cars to buy - Cadillac Fleetwood Broughams d' Elegance for several of the men in the early 1980s, according to former follower Grant Kemp.
"Rama wanted all the brethren to have flashy cars that everybody could see and leave the impression that we were very, very wealthy," he said.
At a Shawano County court hearing in 2002, Lori Ballinger, who described herself as part the group from 1975 to 1995, testified that she and family members "completely" gave up personal autonomy to Cohen.
"He directed things that we did every day," Ballinger testified. "Even, I lived five hours away from Shawano, but still I would call him in the morning before I went to school. I would call him before I went grocery shopping. I talked to him nearly every day to tell him what I was doing, to ask him to pray for me, to ask him what I should be doing."
Such behavior may mystify outsiders, but Baylor University professor J. Gordon Melton, founder of the Institute for the Study of American Religion, said some people find it attractive to have decisions made for them.
"While you cede freedom, you gain all of the confidence and you get rid of responsibility," Melton said. "Your security level goes way up."
Janja Lalich, a California State University, Chico, sociology professor, said adherents of alternative religious groups typically are seeking something most people need - a framework to understand life. But followers can become entrenched, held by peer pressure and cut off from outside sources of information, and end up prisoners of what Lalich calls "a bounded reality." The group has "the answers to everything" and establishes its own standards of behavior, she said.
When you're in the group, Lalich said, "it's perfectly normal and it doesn't seem odd."
Arriving in Shawano around midnight, Steve Ritland would sleep with most of the other brethren on the floor in Cohen's basement. Then it was up at 3:30 a.m. for a required shower, a couple more hours of sleep, and up again to begin worship around 6:30.
Former members say the sessions attracted as many as 150 to 200 people and could last until late afternoon. Steve Ritland said he routinely dehydrated himself beforehand because group members sometimes weren't allowed to use a bathroom for long periods.
Brethren remained on their knees while Cohen preached. That, too, could go for some time.
"He can talk literally for hours, eight hours straight, without notes," said Bill Stecker, who was teaching industrial arts at a Mankato, Minn., high school when he and his wife, Cathy, became followers in about 1975.
Besides preaching, Cohen used the meetings to regularly and publicly rebuke and humiliate individuals in the group, former members say. Some say they got tagged with unappealing nicknames: Leech, The Goat, Miserable Nancy. They also say Cohen discouraged members from establishing relationships among themselves, and created an atmosphere in which the brethren felt obliged to inform on one another's misdeeds.
"That was very prevalent," said Steve Ritland, a member from 1974 to 2001. " . . . If you could expose somebody else's sin, you got a lot of points with Rama."
After the Saturday meeting came evening showers, then another worship meeting Saturday night. And another on Sunday. And on Sunday night.
Ritland typically would begin driving back to Rochester, Minn., and his Monday morning job as an engineer at IBM between 10 p.m. and midnight.
"Twice I almost ran head-on into an 18-wheeler because I was so sleep-deprived," he said.
Cohen still gave interviews in the mid-1970s. He was preaching Jesus then.
"Jesus Christ is coming back," The Milwaukee Journal quoted him as saying in 1975. "The timing of His coming is very soon."
Eight months later, the Minneapolis Tribune described him as saying Jesus had given him the ability to read people's minds, predict their futures, heal their diseases and discern what was sinful.
But the last time Cohen spoke to reporters may have been in 1982, when the Milwaukee Sentinel reported that he described himself as a hellfire-and-brimstone type of preacher who led a group of "pure Christians."
That interview followed the abduction of Cohen follower William Eilers by "deprogrammers" who held him in a boarded-up room at a center owned by a Catholic religious order for 5½ days, the first two of which he was handcuffed to a bed. Eilers, then 24, escaped, rejoined Cohen's group and later successfully sued five of his captors.
Five years later, Eilers left the group on his own. He didn't respond to attempts to contact him, but in 2002 he testified at the same Shawano County court hearing as Lori Ballinger, this time sharply criticizing what he once had embraced.
"I was in the group for seven years," Eilers testified. "I totally lost the '80s. I never heard a radio. I never saw a television. I never read a newspaper unless I was instructed to. I worked on a farm. I never went to town. I never saw a woman, never got a hug, never talked to people unless I was instructed to."
"The outside world is the enemy," Eilers testified. "Everybody who isn't part of the group is the enemy, and that's the bottom line."
Much of the group's growth was organic: The brethren had lots of children. Ritland and his first wife had eight. Kemp and his wife had seven. The Steckers had nine. Others had even more. Some of those children, former members allege, went on to suffer harsh treatment.
The accusations are among the records in two court files.
The first involved a criminal case in Shawano against Gaeland Priebe, who was convicted of repeatedly sexually assaulting his daughter.
Priebe was a group member when the assaults occurred and tried, unsuccessfully, to avoid prison by arguing he lost control over his actions because of Cohen's domination. Before his sentencing in 2002, several former members, including Eilers and Ballinger, testified or wrote letters on his behalf.
The former followers alleged a litany of abuse within the group: Children kicked, hit with a stick or board, jolted with a cattle prod, forced to remain in barrels for hours without bathroom privileges, made to eat their own vomit.
In different litigation around roughly the same time, several other people - group members and other former members - swore in affidavits that no such abuses occurred.
No prosecution was ever begun based on the former members' allegations.
Robert Schmidt, then Shawano County sheriff, expressed skepticism to a Green Bay television station around the time the abuse claims surfaced. Some children in the group attended public schools, but Schmidt said there had been no reports from teachers and social workers suggesting abuse.
Schmidt couldn't be reached for an interview for this story. But Gary Bruno, then-Shawano County district attorney, said the accusers' credibility never became an issue because the statute of limitations had expired on the alleged incidents.
"There was absolutely nothing that could be done," he said.
In 2008, the abuse question emerged again in a Minneapolis divorce case.
Shushanie Aschemann had left Cohen's group. Her husband, Dan, remained. He sought joint custody of their children, 3 and 2, and wanted to take them to group meetings in Shawano. Shushanie didn't want them going there.
She won. District Judge Bruce Peterson awarded her sole legal and physical custody, and barred Dan from involving the children in the group unless Shushanie agreed to it or a court changed the ruling.
In his order, Peterson said there had been significant and credible reports of abuse occurring at the group's weekend meetings.
Two former members who appeared in court on Shushanie's behalf (neither figured in the earlier Shawano case) "credibly testified to and corroborated" the allegations "of physical abuse and parental alienation within the group," Peterson wrote.
He said one of the witnesses, Huldah Gronvall, "described the group as a caste system with Mr. Cohen as its head. She testified that Mr. Cohen alienates children from their parents in an effort to exercise total control over members of the group and to create unquestioning allegiance to him."
The other witness, Peterson said, had "testified that children of all ages were forced to perform extensive physical labor at the compound without adequate access to food and water."
That witness was Leah Gaworek, now an attorney in Green Bay. Among other things, she testified she once saw Cohen become extremely angry because a boy and a girl, after kneeling in the accepted position for at least four hours in a room crammed with other children, had moved their legs and touched their feet to a flier containing Cohen's teachings.
According to Gaworek's testimony, Cohen sat the boy on a concrete floor and ordered all the other children to gather round and spit on him. Then, she testified, they did the same thing to the second child.
The second child was Gronvall, who later testified that Gaworek's account was accurate. In an interview, Gronvall, now an engineer on the East Coast, estimated more than 40 children spit at her.
Dan Aschemann testified that the group did not engage in any abuse of children. Former member Miriam Fayas supported him, testifying that she had never observed abuse, never saw anyone struck with an object, and that she had no concerns for the safety of her son, who traveled with her ex-husband to Shawano each weekend for group meetings.
"Actually I feel very comforted and assured every time he leaves to go on the weekends," Fayas testified.
She testified that the Shawano teachings had been "the best thing, I firmly believe, that ever happened to me." People were taught "to obtain education to the fullest," Fayas said. Referring to her son, she testified that she had been "raised with very good morals, with good teachings, and I want him to have the same thing that I was raised with."
To Sarah Slaby, the assertions some former brethren level at Cohen - overriding control, public humiliations, even physical abuse - don't ring true.
"I had free will on where I went to school, where I got a job," said Slaby, who was raised in the group and still goes to the weekend meetings occasionally. "I didn't answer to anybody."
Despite the control some people feel Cohen exercised over them, there are varying levels of involvement and allegiance among followers. And while there has been a group in the sense of people gathered together for a common purpose, there is no formal membership.
"All my experience has been positive," said Slaby, a veterinarian in western Wisconsin. "In fact I would have to say that because of the strong network in my family, as well as Dr. Cohen, I have a lot of good in my life."
Those influences include solid moral grounding and appreciation for the value of hard work and education, she said.
"I have a brother who's a lawyer, a brother who's a doctor, two brothers who own big businesses up in the (Twin) Cities," Slaby said. "And I don't think that would be possible without our upbringing and influence from Dr. Cohen."
Many others forged similar careers, with an unusual number becoming attorneys.
Slaby said a professor told her she wasn't smart enough to be a veterinarian. But, she said, "I had all the encouragement from my parents and Dr. Cohen that (if) you work hard enough you can accomplish whatever you want."
In ruling on the Aschemann divorce, Judge Peterson noted that all of the witnesses raised in Cohen's group, whether still in or not, were "sincere, articulate, intelligent and generally highly accomplished individuals." He said that might not be coincidence, and that at some point the Aschemann children "may very well derive some benefit from the teaching or the community support of the group."
Weighing the truth of those who have broken away from an alternative religious group against those who remain loyal is difficult, said John R. Hall, a sociology professor at the University of California, Davis.
Both sides have agendas, he said. The agenda of the adherents is obvious: protect the group. But Hall said former members-turned-critics may say they were brainwashed as a way of accounting for years of involvement in something they now regret, and may embellish what some sociologists call "atrocity tales."
The allegations in public documents of harsh physical treatment in Cohen's group come from 10 people. All but one specifically said they witnessed the punishment or were the recipient. All of the incidents appear to involve alleged events from the 1980s and '90s.
Against that stand other court affidavits and testimony of Fayas and at least eight other people, four of whom said they were no longer group members. A few of the nine said they never witnessed any abuse. Most went further, saying no abuse occurred whatsoever.
Melton said accounts of disaffected former members of religious groups should be taken seriously. If many people say the same thing, especially if they say they were witnesses, "that becomes a secondary verification," he said.
"In other words, if you've got one person coming out, that's one thing. If you're got 10 people . . . that raises the veracity of the charge."
And if an equal number deny the accounts?
"I've found that over the years that when you've got two kinds of absolute things," Melton said, "it's something in the middle that really occurred."
They called it "having a great heart for Brother." According to former members, it meant showing allegiance by doing special things for Cohen, many of which they now view as ridiculous.
Cathy Stecker, for example, said she ironed paper money she presented as donations.
Kemp said that, at Cohen's behest, he sometimes drove from Rochester, Minn., to Shawano by way of downtown Chicago - 330 miles out of his way. The reason: To buy fruits and vegetables for Cohen at a specific produce market he liked.
Stecker tells of an even longer mission: She said she and a young man in the group drove straight through from Shawano to Los Angeles to Philadelphia and back to Shawano - nearly 6,000 miles in four days.
They stopped only for gasoline, she said. One slept; the other drove. They ate convenience-store food purchased when they gassed up. And they carried out their assignment from Cohen, Stecker said, which was to pick up an envelope at a Los Angeles furniture market and some brochures in Philadelphia.
"Cross the country both directions for something that could have been handled for $13 FedEx," Bill Stecker said.
But at the time Cathy was happy to do it, in her car and at her expense. As she saw it, Cohen was rewarding her by entrusting her with the job.
"I really felt privileged," she said, " . . . even though it was the craziest thing ever."
It wasn't, however, the most substantive way she showed a great heart.
During the 1990s, she and Bill remained in the group but lived in North Carolina, where Bill owned a business. But in 1999, they said, amid difficulties with one of their sons, Cohen told Cathy she should move to Shawano. Bill remained to tend his business, but Cathy, without hesitation, pulled their three minor children out of school, packed their things and gave notice at her job as a medical technologist.
"In two weeks we were up there," she said.
They arrived not long before the Samanta Roy Institute bought a fudge and gift shop - the first of what would be nearly a dozen business purchases. Volunteers have provided the labor at some, if not all, of the businesses, bankruptcy documents indicate.
Last May, the U.S. trustee in Delaware bankruptcy court said neither the institute nor any of its at-least-12 for-profit subsidiaries had any paid employees. "Rather, all officers and other persons who do work for the companies are volunteers," U.S. Trustee Roberta DeAngelis said in a motion.
Institute representatives also have spoken on the staffing of organization businesses. For example, at a September 2009 hearing in a bankruptcy case involving the institute, five real-estate holding subsidiaries and the subsidiary operating the Shawano gas stations, institute attorney Steven Usdin told the judge: "As your honor is well aware, there are no employees of any of these entities."
In an interview, Scott Paape, who managed the Shawano kart racing track from 2004 through 2008, said everyone who worked there belonged to the group, and worked hard. Young children, he said, were among a crew that once put down 10 to 15 acres of sod at the site.
"They laid that in four days nonstop," he said, "and these kids ranged from 6 years old to 21, 22. . . . Moving stones, moving rocks. It was quite amazing."
Cohen visited the track often and lavished money on it, said Paape, a rare outsider involved in Samanta Roy Institute business.
"He would usually come out at night and would have his posse around him. . . . He would want to know what I needed. Anything I asked for I got."
"I've got to say one thing," said Paape, who now runs a track in New Jersey. "When they built it, they built it right. That track is amazing."
And it attracted top professional karting events, as well as motorcycle races. But it was overbuilt, said track designer Kenny Venberg, and the spending on the facility would presage future financial woes.
"They were told that right off the bat, that it was going to be a huge problem for them," said Venberg, a former vice president of the World Karting Association. Further, he said, the location isn't great.
"They had too big of a debt load, OK, and it was never going to fly," Venberg said.
Entities owned by the Samanta Roy Institute spent $8.7 million on the track and adjacent amusement park from 2004 through 2008, according to a document the organization filed in Delaware bankruptcy court in August 2009. A year later, in an affidavit filed in bankruptcy court in Wisconsin, institute CEO Naomi Isaacson - a sister of Shushanie Aschemann - said the organization had "built a $12 million racetrack in Shawano."
Whatever the figure, the track was easily the institute's largest single asset - but far from its only one.
During 2004-'05, Samanta Roy entities spent more than $4 million on other properties and businesses, and signed $7.5 million in land contracts for still more.
By 2008, though, the buying was long over and litigation was mounting. Creditors holding security in four of the gas stations, two apartment buildings and the track had sued or declared loans to be in default.
The hotels, meanwhile, were suffering. Within just two years, from 2006 to 2008, revenue fell by 54%, city room-tax figures indicate. Revenue at the city's other two main hotels rose a combined 11% during that period.
In court documents, institute representatives mention the economic recession as having hurt their businesses, but overwhelmingly emphasize what they describe as a campaign of discrimination led by Shawano's mayor.
Because of Cohen's racial and religious background, "we have suffered from unimaginable prejudice, discrimination and business interference at the hands of Shawano city officials," Isaacson said in her 2010 affidavit in bankruptcy court in Wisconsin.
"Throughout the years, the city has issued countless baseless citations and maliciously stormed (institute) businesses to intimidate and harass (institute) personnel and customers with the objective of running us down financially," Isaacson wrote.
The conspiracy against the institute extends far beyond Shawano, she alleged in the affidavit.
"According to what we have been told," she wrote, "through their common race and religion, Shawano Mayor Lorna Marquardt has wrapped her tentacles around the judiciary system including Shawano Municipal judges, Shawano County judges, Wisconsin Appellate Court judges, the Federal District Court judge in Green Bay, Seventh Circuit Appellate Court judges and even U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Kevin Gross in Delaware."
A month later, Isaacson declared in a Minnesota bankruptcy case that "Marquardt is a descendant of Martin Luther and Hitler who started and propagated the Lutheran cult." Isaacson described Christianity as "the most dangerous death cult in human history whose sole function is to eradicate those who refuse to be converted."
The following month, Bruce E. Scott, a Minnesota attorney and a board member of the Samanta Roy Institute, said in a bankruptcy court document that "Shawano is Neo-Nazi territory where it is believed people of other races and religions have no right to life."
He likened the organization's situation to that of Jews in Nazi Germany.
"Lorna's forefather, Hitler, started the Holocaust to rob the wealth and properties of the Jews," Scott wrote. "Lorna Marquardt is doing no different."
Marquardt declined to comment at length, citing pending litigation. In an email, she said: "The accusations about the City of Shawano and me are outrageous and untrue. The people who reside and work here in our beautiful community are wonderful caring folks. This negativity affects us all."
There have been incidents of hostility toward Cohen's group over the years.
In her 2010 affidavit in bankruptcy court in Wisconsin, Isaacson - who has declared in a filing with the Internal Revenue Service that she works 80 hours a week as the institute CEO for no pay - said people have driven past the organization's headquarters (Cohen's house) "to scream obscene epithets, to throw rocks, eggs, tomatoes and beer bottles, to shoot arrows through the windows, and start the trees on fire."
Though not "an everyday occurrence," harassment and vandalism do occur, Shawano County Sheriff Randy Wright said. Possibly to bait the ever-present guard in Cohen's driveway, Wright said, teenagers and even some adults "might moon them, they might throw eggs at them, give them the finger - that sort of thing."
Sheriff's Department reports show four incidents of vandalism at Cohen's house over the last 10 years, and six others within about a half mile at other properties owned by Cohen or the institute. Three of those involved mailboxes being damaged or wrecked.
At the house, a car was hit once by eggs and once by an unknown object that damaged its windshield, and eggs were thrown at heavy equipment, according to the reports. The reports also show that in 2002 someone took a large cardboard tube, filled it with gunpowder, sealed the ends and exploded it in a field near Cohen's house.
The most serious incident occurred in 1978, when someone fired .22-caliber bullets into a bedroom window. Cohen's wife was almost hit, the Shawano Evening Leader reported.
Vandalism to Samanta Roy-affiliated businesses has included the breaking of a window at the downtown gift shop in 2006. A police report said someone may have fired at the window twice with a BB gun.
Conversations with about 30 Shawano-area residents yielded a mixture of opinion on Cohen and the institute, but more negative than positive. Critics said they based their views not on race or religion but on actions, such as the organization's purchase of downtown storefronts that have since have remained vacant or a supporter's YouTube videos superimposing Marquardt's head on images of emaciated Holocaust victims and a cross dripping with blood.
"What's sad is they're . . . the nicest people - hardworking, kind, considerate. And then they do some real wacky stuff," said Dawn Bahr, owner of a farm store in Shawano next to one of the gas stations.
Bahr believes the group may have some cause for complaint in the way local government has dealt with Samanta Roy businesses at times. Local insurance agent David Feivor said much the same thing. But both also said the aggravations and difficulties of dealing with the group probably affect the city's approach.
"It's not an easy gig when they lambaste the community," said Feivor, whose late father sold one of the hotels to an institute subsidiary, and who now holds an interest in the subsidiary's debt.
Dale Vannes, a former plan commissioner in the Town of Wescott, where Cohen's house is located, said that whenever officials stopped construction work being done without a permit, they would be accused of discrimination.
"The saying was, 'You're just picking on the doctor,' " he said. "That's what we heard constantly."
As creditors sued institute-controlled entities and moved to foreclose, the organization and its subsidiaries filed a string of Chapter 11 bankruptcies - nine of them, in four states, from March 2009 to March 2011.
Chapter 11 holds creditors at bay while a financially troubled firm reorganizes. With Samanta Roy and its subsidiaries, judges would dismiss cases, opening the door for lenders to foreclose. But then the unit would appeal or file a new Chapter 11 action.
Most notable was the cross-country, hop-scotching affair of Midwest Oil of Minnesota LLC.
The subsidiary and a successor, with three gas station/convenience store properties in Minnesota, filed five consecutive Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases - two in Delaware, two in Minnesota and one in New York.
In June, though, with the U.S. trustee arguing that the firm was abusing the system with bad-faith filings aimed at thwarting creditors, a judge in Minnesota cut the string. He turned the case into a Chapter 7 liquidation. Creditors took possession of the Minnesota gas stations, along with a St. Paul apartment building.
But the creditor on one of the stations quickly resold the property to a recently organized company run by Isaacson, the institute's CEO.
Meanwhile, a Delaware judge dismissed three related Chapter 11 cases and barred the Samanta Roy Institute and two of its subsidiaries from seeking bankruptcy protection again until August 2012.
That gave creditors another shot. One lender took possession of two eight-unit apartment buildings in Shawano. Another moved to solidify a $3.3 million judgment it holds against the racetrack. A foreclosure action is pending by a third creditor on the institute's fudge shop and five other commercial parcels.
For all its financial struggles, the institute still holds its Shawano gas stations. And while some people criticize their use of volunteer labor, their consistently low pricing appears to generate steady traffic.
Cohen still owns the house north of Shawano and 89 acres of surrounding land, but now lives on the East Coast and commutes to Wisconsin, former members said. Nancy Ritland said that while she was still with the group - she left in September 2007 - he returned most weekends to lead worship meetings.
Former members said Cohen and his wife moved when their son and daughter began college in the East. Their daughter, Deborah, died in 2007 of cancer.
Cohen owns a 3,400-square-foot house in the Baltimore area, inherited from Deborah, who bought it in 2001, land records show. Under renovation for years, the house has been elaborately appointed, at Cohen's direction, Bill Stecker said. He said he was in the house scores of times from about 2002 to 2005, working on it for free.
The house, he said, was fitted with cherry doors and cabinets, Greek-key molding, floors inlaid with exotic woods in fancy patterns, inch-thick granite countertops, almost 60 mirrors and top-of-the-line kitchen appliances. Stecker, who is the inventor on 11 patents, said he did much of the wood-finishing work at the house.
"It looks like a museum inside," he said.
People who have broken from Cohen give various reasons. Leah Gaworek said she began seeing contradictions in Cohen's teachings, and that college courses on comparative religion and philosophy gave her new perspective. Steve Ritland said he left because Cohen abandoned the New Testament. Bill Stecker, who estimates that over 30 years he and his wife gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Cohen, said fears for their financial future helped persuade him and Cathy to break the ties.
All four can name the exact date they broke away.
Gaworek, who had been staying in Cohen's basement before she left - on June 23, 2000 - said she sneaked away in the night. She said that even though she had stopped believing Cohen's teachings, she was afraid he would be able to make her feel guilty about leaving.
"I knew that if he gave me the hell-and-brimstone lecture I would cave," she said.
In interviews, Gaworek said she lived for more than three years in a corner of Cohen's basement, saw teenage girls have their heads shaved for perceived misbehavior and had her belongings burned because she disobeyed Cohen's orders.
In court in Minneapolis, she testified that she saw Cohen hit children with a switch made of house wire, and that once when she was 3 or 4 he shocked her with a cattle prod on the face, neck and shoulders because she had disobeyed his orders to stop crying.
But her harshest criticism is over something else. The worst thing Cohen has done, she said, is split families.
Gaworek, the Steckers and the Ritlands all say they've experienced deep family estrangement.
Most of the Steckers' children also have broken with Cohen (Bill and Cathy left on June 30, 2005), but their daughter Miriam remains loyal and won't speak with her parents, Bill Stecker said.
"Miriam has two children that we've never seen," he said. "I'd like to say I miss them, but I don't because they don't exist for me."
Gaworek said her mother remains in the group, and that her 94-year-old mother - Gaworek's grandmother - has not seen her daughter in more than 35 years. Gaworek used to talk about her mother during visits and telephone calls, but not anymore. It's too hard to watch her grandmother cry.
A few years ago Steve Ritland - he left the group March 19, 2001 - was in Maryland and tried to see one of his daughters, a physician and neuroscientist who works at the National Institutes of Health. He was allowed into her office building, he said, and waited while she responded to a message that she had a visitor. According to Ritland, she emerged through a security door, stared at him for a few moments in astonishment, then wheeled around and disappeared without saying a word.
For all their regrets, Cohen's former followers have carved out new lives, although with difficulty.
"To tell yourself that 33 years of your life was a big mistake is hard to admit," Nancy Ritland said.
For a long time after leaving, Bill Stecker struggled to gain a spiritual perspective that left him at peace. He finally found it in the words of an elderly friend, a carpenter named Whitey. Stecker had been complaining about the casual way people dressed and behaved at his new church - so different from the brethren's seriousness - when Whitey cautioned him with a simple but compelling message.
"He says, 'Bill, don't get a critical spirit. That's all. Just don't get a critical spirit. Lord'll take care of everything else.'
"And then I realized that the key to Shawano was you developed this critical nature toward everything that wasn't you, everything that wasn't the group."
Nancy Ritland, who left Sept. 6, 2007, has all but lost her children from her first marriage, which she said Cohen arranged. One works in the Shawano gas stations, another manages one of the hotels and the third is a handyman, she said. When she telephones, she said, they hang up on her, but at least she hears their voices.
It's something. And she has Steve.
They met again by chance, not long after she left Shawano, when he was visiting another former member in Superior. Nancy happened to be staying there temporarily and, having just set out on a new path, had lots of errands to do.
"So I took her around town and we found that we enjoyed each other's company," Steve said.
A month later, at a Christian conference in Duluth, they took a leap of faith - in each other. Nancy, traumatized by the separation from her children and the abrupt change in her life, responded to Steve's concern for her. Their common background helped bring them together too, along with a shared interest in the spiritual life. In less than a year they were married.
A couple of months ago they took another big step. They sold the little ranch house in Rochester, Minn., where Steve had lived for 43 years, where he and his first wife raised eight children, and where Nancy had stayed with them for a while as a young woman who had just broken away from her parents and joined Cohen's group.
They packed up Steve's well-thumbed King James Bible and their worldly goods and headed to southern Missouri and a new home - six acres of land with an orchard, a spring, a little house and a chicken-raising business to keep them busy.
A day after they left Minnesota for good, Steve took time to reflect on the move and post a message on Facebook.
" . . . I feel free and full of joy," he wrote. "The Lord has helped us all the way."
