Krishna Venta
Krishna Venta was born Francis Herman Pencovic in San Francisco. In 1948, after serving in the US Army during World War II announced to the world that he was the Messiah as the returned Christ. He founded a religious group in California which he called WKFL Fountain of the World (Wisdom, Knowledge, Faith and Love) in a building which had formerly housed a brothel in Santa Barbara, California. In a short time he was able to purchase, using the funds he received by admitting new followers into his group, 25 acres of land south of Los Angeles in box Canyon.
Legally changing his name to Krishna Venta, the messiah told his followers that there would be no more than 144,000 to survive the coming end of the world, and those would be his followers, thus establishing the limits of its growth (which it never reached). He said that he had been born on the planet Neophrates, which was in the same orbital plane as earth and which was drawn into the sun, forcing him and his followers to travel to earth in rocket ships. He had been on earth since, in a wide variety of incarnations which included him either being or being with Abraham, Moses, Mohammed, the Archangel Gabriel, the Angel Moroni, and Jesus Christ.
Venta had been married and divorced before his divinity, and when his ex-wife sued for child support, court papers revealed that the then Pencovic had stated that he would plan his life to be protected, and that he would “…form this organization where people would give all their possessions into the organization and he would be the head of the organization, nothing would be in his name…yet he would have them arrange for all the money he wanted to use anytime he wanted it.” The same papers reveal that the messiah liked to stop over in Vegas from time to time, where his divinity didn’t stop him from losing money.
When he was at the Fountain’s site, Venta often had himself crucified before his followers, using a bicycle seat to support him on a cross to which he was tied, as a means of reinforcing his sermons of that day. In addition to being loose with the group’s money, he was dismissive of celibacy, except among his followers, and it was his proclivity for seducing the wives of some of his followers which brought down his group.
A pair of former followers killed Venta after learning of his affairs with both of their wives. In December 1958 the two men went to the large house which the group had built for Venta in Box Canyon. Each were wearing several sticks of dynamite strapped to their bodies and once in the house they detonated the suicide bombs. Venta and seven other followers were killed in the explosion, one of them an infant, as well as the two bombers.