Former cult member speaks from grave

Only on 4/January 18, 2005
By Lupita Murillo

Ten days ago, Ricky Rodriguez murdered 51-year old Angela Smith in a Tucson apartment.

Within hours, he killed himself.

His wife blames his actions on his childhood.

Rodriguez claimed he was raised as a sex slave in religious cult run by his own mother.

"Anger does not begin to describe how I feel about these people and what they done. Rage, I get livid," words Rodriguez says on a video tape he recorded the day before police say he killed Smith.

In the video, Ricky Rodriguez sits in his apartment, and from his kitchen table, documents his plan -- to hunt down and kill several members of a religous sect he claims sexually abused him and other children.

Rodriguez says, "There is this need... I have a need. It's not a (explitive) want. It's a need and I wish it wasn't, but this need for revenge, it's a need for justice."

Loading bullets into magazines, the 29-year-old talks about the abuse."Thousands of us, some worse than others, I had it good in many ways"

As a toddler, it been reported that Rodriguez was being groomed to lead the group, but he managed to break away several years ago.

Leaders of the sect have admitted publicly that as of 1986 the rules were changed to ban sex with minors.

The tape is almost an hour long.

Rodriguez shows weapons he intends to use to torture those he felt tortured him, including a drill, a kitchen fork and a stun gun.

He says, "I have this nice Glock and all this (explitive) ammo, but the truth, this is my weapon of choice." He shows a sharpened knife.

By far the most chilling part of the tape is when Rodriguez vows revenge on the group's leader,his own mother.

"My mom is going to pay for that. She is going to pay dearly one way or another. If I don't get to her...man if I don't get to her and life goes on, I'm going to keep haunting her in the next life."

Angela Smith's body was discovered in Rodriguez's apartment on Sunday, two days after the videotape was recorded.

Her throat had been slashed.

Rodriguez shot himself in a parked car in Blythe, California that same day.

Claire Borowick, a spokeswoman for the group told CNN that's not true. "To set the record straight, Angela Smith was never Ricky Rodriguez' 'nanny," said Borowick.

Borowick maintains that Rodriguez was never abused by Smith, althought he was raised in a sexually-permissive envioronment which was encouraged by parents who were leaders of the "The Family."