CHAPTER THREE

"God's Left Hook"

The air hangs heavy, torpid, and hot. Pulling the warm steam into one's lungs leaves only a disturbing sense of slow suffocation. Under the harsh subtropic sun, the magnolia blossoms slip from the black-green leaves, falling like wet snow-petals to perfume the red-clay earth. In the heat, it leaves a heavy, hanging smell...the wealth of Dixie. Fred Phelps spent his first years here.

Outside the courthouse, flags sag limp and breezeless. Above the doors are cut the words: Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbor It's Meridian, Mississippi, town of old store fronts, mouthwatering cornbread, and 40,000 people. Surrounded by 100-foot pine forests, its business is lumber. Trucks and flatbed railcars loaded with freshly cut logs rolls slowly by. To the sensual fragrance of the magnolias is added the sweet aroma of pine. While great pyramids of logs await processing into lumber at the plant on the west side, Navy jets roar overhead...the other source of revenue. The federal government threatens to close the base down; the locals fight to keep it. Meridian was sacked by General Sheridan during the Civil War. The implacable bluecoat burned the town and tore up what, till then, had been a rail hub of the South. The town has since recovered. The railroad did not. In the cemeteries can be found gravestones of the Confederate dead. Among them, a more recent marker reads: Catherine Idalette Phelps, Age 28 Fred's mother used to open all the windows in the house and play the piano, according to Thetis Grace Hudson, former librarian in Meridian and a neighbor of the Phelps family during the Depression. The other households on her street were too poor to afford any entertainment, she says, so everyone remembered Catherine Phelps for her kindness.

Apparently she played well. Whenever she was at their house, Hudson remembers she used to ask Mrs. Phelps to play the hymn "Love Lifted Me" on the piano. Fred's mother always obliged, even if she was busy. But, after an illness of several months-those who still remember the family say it was throat cancer-Catherine Phelps died on September 3, 1935. Fred was only five years old. Since the little boy's uncle was the mayor of nearby Pascagoula, and his father was prominent in Meridian, the honorary pallbearers at her funeral included the local mayor, a city councilman, two judges, and every member of the police department. Ms. Hudson says young Fred was bewildered at the loss. After his mother's death, a maternal great aunt, Irene Jordan, helped care for Fred and his younger sister, Martha Jean. "She kept house for the daddy," adds a distant relative who declined to be identified. At times, work caused the boy's father to be away from home and Jordan raised the children. The woman Fred Phelps has referred to as 'his dear old aunt' died in a head-on collision in 1951 as she was driving back to Meridian from a nearby town. The boy had lost two mothers before he'd turned 21.

Family friends remember Fred's father was a tall, stately man. A true Southern gentlemen, they say. And a fine Christian. But the elder Phelps also had a hot temper, according to Jack Webb, 81, of Porterville, Miss. Webb owns a general store, the only business in Porterville, a town of about 45 elderly people. "If he got mad, he was mad all over," said Webb. He was ready to fight right quick. He was mad, mad, mad." Webb is a frail man, slightly hard of hearing. Walking into his general store is like stepping back into the 19th century. The shelves, all located behind a 100-foot wooden counter, are stocked with weary tins of Vienna sausage and dusty bottles of aspirin. Coke goes for 30 cents. Glass. No twist-off.

Despite the temper, Webb adds, the elder Phelps was an honorable man. In Meridian, he had been an object of great respect. Fred's father was a veteran of World War One, and throughout his life suffered from the effects of a mustard gassing he'd taken in France. He found work as a detective for the Southern Railroad to support his family. The railroad security force or "bulls", as they were called, had a reputation for brutality when they patrolled the yards to prevent the itinerant laborers, washed out of their hometowns by the Depression, from riding the freights. "My father," says Pastor Phelps, "oft-times came home with blood all over him." Suddenly he stands up, turning his face away, and exits. Several minutes later he returns, smiling, apologizing: "You got me thinking about those days," he offers, then bravely charges into a round of the town's official song: "Meridian, Meridian... a city set upon a hill; Meridian, Meridian... that radiates the South's good will."

The elder Phelps was a "bull" throughout the Depression, says Thetis Hudson, and the pay was good. The family lived comfortably at a time when the other families in town were being ravaged by hardship. What was the son like? "Fred Phelps had as normal and beautiful a home life as anyone ever wanted," commented a relative who didn't want their name used. "His childhood was very good," says Hudson. "There was nothing in his family out of the ordinary." "All I know is it's a tragedy, and it stems from within Fred Phelps," adds the anonymous relative, referring to the homosexual picketing. "It has nothing to do with his upbringing."

As a teenager. Fred was tall and thin and sported a crewcut. He was extraordinarily smart, but thought to be a bit overbearing about it at times. A reserved and serious high school student, he never dated anyone while there. "He was not a real socializer, but he knew a lot of people. Everyone had the greatest respect for him," says Joe Clay Hamilton, former high-school classmate, now a Meridian lawyer. The future Pastor Phelps earned the rank of Eagle Scout with Palms, played coronet and base horn in the high school band, was a high hurdler on the track team, and worked as a reporter on the school's newspaper. In a class of 213 graduates, he ranked sixth. When he was voted class orator for commencement of May, 1946, received the American Legion Award for courage, leadership, scholarship, and service, then honored as his congressman's choice for West Point, Fred Phelps was only 16 years old. A year later this young man, touted as the quiet achiever, had turned his back on West Point, his former life, and his future promise. The summer of '47 would find him a belligerent and eccentric zealot, antagonizing the Mormons in the mountains of Utah. Because of his age, Phelps had to wait one fateful year before entering the military academy. During that time he attended the local junior college. While waiting for his life to start, Fred, along with his best friend, John Capron, went to a revival meeting at the local Methodist church. It was there the budding pastor felt the 'call', and the dreams of going north to West Point melted like the river ice washed down and marooned on the hot mud of the Mississippi banks.

Fred Phelps, by his own description, "went to a little Methodist revival meeting and had what I think was an experience of grace, they call it down there. I felt the call, as they say, and it was powerful. The God of glory appeared. It doesn't mean a vision or anything, but it means an impulse on the heart, as the old preachers say." The revival had a profound effect on both Phelps and Capron. "The two of them 'got religion'," said Joe Hamilton. Friends and relatives claim the two boys became so excited, they were unable to distinguish reality from idealism-they were going off to conquer the world. One relative still in Meridian described it this way: "Fred, bless his heart, just went overboard. If you didn't accept it, he was going to cram it down your throat."

Was this radical change in behavior a characteristic of the conversion experience? Or was there something hidden in the young man's character that drew him to the experience and its consequent license for loud and abusive behavior? If the latter, then some heart should be heard pounding beneath the floorboards in the old Phelps' house. Yet, there is little to be heard.

Fletcher Rosenbaum, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force who lives in Meridian, went to high school with Phelps. "He was good at whatever he tried," Rosenbaum says. "He was a first-class individual. I would be surprised if he wasn't a top-notch citizen in Topeka." Picketing AIDS funerals and the fax attacks on members of his community by Phelps surprised Rosenbaum: "He was very reserved in high school. Very quiet. I'm surprised he would be involved in aggressive activities. To me, it would be out of character for him." This observation may not be entirely accurate. One woman, a librarian at the Meridian Public Library, said she remembers Phelps and went to school and church with him. "He doesn't bend," she observed. "He never did." She also described him as "spooky", "different", and "a preacher prodigy." "You tell him not to do it, and he'll do it," said another Meridian woman. "He was a very determined person. That's to be admired, but it can be taken too far." Even Fred himself remembers differently. He was a boxer throughout high school and, reminiscing briefly about his days in Meridian, he chuckles to himself. If any of the other boys came to class with a puffy face or shiner, their friends would ask if they'd been sparring with Phelps. He always left his mark on them, he tells me proudly.

Sid Curtis, a grade-school classmate of Fred's, remembers the future pastor drew well, even then. What did he draw? Boxers.

A golden glove contender in high school, Fred fought twice in state meets, winning matches which, according to him, were head-on slugfests. Not aggressive? Not the Bull of Topeka yet, but clearly it was in his character. A story in the high-school paper, predicting the futures of Phelps and his classmates, reads: "Fred Phelps will box in Madison Square Garden next June, 1954. Young Phelps will fight for the world championship." One can only wonder what deep currents rose in the teenager whenever he climbed into the ring. Recalling the earlier testimony of his sons, Nate and Mark, and remembering that research has proven abusive behavior is passed with high probability from one generation to the next, the question must be raised: Was the Pastor Phelps equally abused as a child? In the South, there is an unwritten code you don't bad-mouth one of your own. Strangers are welcome unless they ask too many questions, or speak ill of Southern folks and ways. In fact, if ET had come down in Meridian instead of Southern California, and a yankee inquired about that today, folks would probably scratch their chins, figure the carpet-baggers with a knowing eye, and say he was a quiet boy, little short for his age...but had good hands for the piano... If the stories his sons have told are true, the outside observer has two choices in understanding Fred Phelps: either there's a pounding heart under the floor in that old house or the teenager's Saul- into-Paul experience produced the character change. However, many Christians might find it difficult to believe that discovering Jesus would render a good-natured, quiet lad into the bullying hostile whose trail we will shortly follow from Vernal, Utah to Topeka, Kansas. If something did happen to throw Fred Waldron Phelps off track, something that mangled him for life, no one in Meridian wanted to say. Doing that no doubt would be to speak ill of the dead-something Pastor Phelps also was taught to avoid.

Yet, suddenly at 16, the child has become the man: fanatic, unempathic, combative, and vindictive. If there is an answer to the question, 'why does Fred hate us all so much?', perhaps it lies in those years, age five to 15, when his father was largely absent and Fred and his sister were cared for by Irene Jordan.

"If he were dead, I'd talk," says Fred's sister, Martha Jean Capron, now residing in Pennsylvania. "But as long as he's alive...that's up to him..." Following the revival experience, Phelps abandoned plans for West Point. He moved to Cleveland, Tennessee, where he attended Bob Jones College, a non-denominational Christian academy.

John Capron went with him. While Fred and his boyhood chum would eventually separate over religion, Martha Jean and Capron never would: they were married and moved to Indonesia as missionaries. John was a minister there for ten years. Later he would smuggle Bibles into Communist China. Pastor Phelps' brother-in-law died of a heart attack in 1982.

Perhaps it's a shame Phelps didn't go to West Point. An army career could have provided a healthy outlet for his aggression, been more compatible with his demanding and commanding nature, while his strong body, mind, and will would have been an asset to the service and his country. If he'd survived Korea as a 2nd lieutenant, probably he'd have been a lieutenant colonel by Vietnam. There he'd almost certainly have chipped his Manichaean mandibles of dualism on that war's hard bone of moral ambiguity. Either he'd have ended on a river somewhere, whispering "the horror...the horror..." to bewildered junior officers, or gained a wider horizon and returned home to retire an urbane cynic and Southern gentleman. But in 1946, Fred Phelps had a year to kill instead of Nazis or North Koreans. The revival took him from Meridian to Bob Jones; from there the future pastor found another outlet for his anger. This one gave instant gratification and conferred adult license to abuse almost overnight: lip-shooting preacher; revivalist minister. And, unlike Vietnam, here God was unequivocally on his side...

As part of a Rocky Mountain mission assignment in summer, 1947, Phelps and two other students from Bob Jones were to seek out a fundamentalist church, convert non-believers to Christianity and steer the converts to that church. The three men chose Vernal, a town in northeast Utah. They would be working to convert, not secular hedonists, but a population that was predominantly and staunchly Mormon. When Fred and his friends got there, they set up a meeting tent brought from Bob Jones in the city park. A local Baptist minister provided them food and lodging (B.H. McAlister, who would later ordain Phelps). During the day the do-it- yourself apostles went door-to-door, seeking converts to the good news. At night, they conducted revival meetings in the tent. Only no one came.

So Ed Nelson, one of the trio, had an idea. He went to a local radio station and asked if he might buy a block of time. Nope, was the reply. Not if you're going to attack the Mormon church. Ok, said Ed, can I announce I'll be giving an address tonight at the tent?

Sure. So Ed Nelson announced on the radio he'd be doing just that. And the title of the speech? 'What's Wrong with the Mormon Church?' says Ed, over the air. That night, continues Nelson, now 69 and a traveling Baptist evangelist based in Denver, a huge crowd arrived. It was so large, the trip had to roll up the sides of the tent. Ed was nervous, but he gave his speech. The crowd listened politely. When the young evangelist was finished, a man in the crowd asked would there be questions. Sure, said Ed.

But the very first one stumped him, Nelson confesses disarmingly, and he panicked. Flustered, he announced there would be no more questions. Several in the throng protested, saying that, after sitting in courtesy, listening to their religion attacked, they weren't going to let the young men off so easily-that they should be willing to answer the crowd's questions.

At that, Fred rushed one of the men speaking and started to throw a punch, but Ed grabbed his arm and shouted: "Fred! Fred! No! Don't you do it!" "And," Nelson recounts, "Fred looked at that guy and he said, 'you shut your mouth, you dirty...' something or other."

Which, to Ed, only compounded their troubles. Fred's companion then raised his arms and shouted, "Folks, the meeting's over! It's over!" And he rushed out and killed the lights inside the tent. This discouraged any further theological discussion.

It would seem this format-speak one's mind, then take violent offense at anything less than complete agreement, and suppress all opposing views by any means handy-was the major life lesson learned by Fred Phelps during his sojourn among the Vernal heathen. "He was hot-headed and peculiar," remembers Nelson about Fred then. Eventually the minister decided to cease his association with Phelps because of his hostility and aggressiveness. "The last time I saw him, he was traveling through (on the road preaching). My wife and I gave them a hundred dollars and a bunch of handkerchiefs." When told of what Phelps was doing today, Ed said: "I'm not surprised. He was heading that way. He was so brilliant, he was dangerous. He was getting involved in the idea that only he was saved...going into heresy..." Though vandals damaged the tent, the boys from Bob Jones continued to hold nightly meetings there during the rest of their vacation. No one came, but Nelson reports they did manage to convert two teenage girls-at least for the summer.

At the end of their stay, Fred got ordained. Ordained? At 17? Isn't that too young? "No, it isn't," replies B.H. McAlister, who did the ordaining. "If he can pass the test, he is eligible. I don't think the word of God is bound by age."

Phelps was at least three years younger than most when they become ministers. Southern Baptists do not require a candidate for the ministry be a graduate of seminary. McAlister, who has helped ordain hundreds of ministers, said an examination board of 10 to 20 ministers would ask a candidate questions about doctrines and scriptures. Not everyone passed. Fred Phelps did-but only after McAlister and a missionary convinced the teenager he was wrong on a scriptural fine point. Which point was that? According to McAlister, Phelps considered the local church to be more than a place of fellowship-for him, membership in the local congregation directly corresponded to membership in the Body of Christ. Phelps may have conceded the point to be ordained, but, for 40 years, his family and church members in Topeka have been controlled by his threat that, if they depart his congregation, they must carry a letter of permission from him. In addition, they must join a congregation that he approves. Otherwise, as with Mark and Nate, the pastor Phelps draws up the dreaded missive ordering the straying sheep to be 'delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.' "We barely knew him," admits McAlister, who settled upon Fred the distinction of having been both baptized and ordained in a single eventful summer.

Phelps returned that autumn to Bob Jones, but left after a year without graduating. Later he would say he did so because the school was racist. In 1983, the IRS revoked the tax exemption of Bob Jones, accusing it of practicing racial discrimination. From there, Fred went north to the Prairie Bible Institute near Calgary, Alberta. But after two semesters he moved on.

Sources have disclosed the head of the college felt pastor Phelps might be clinically disturbed. Compatible with that diagnosis, Fred's next stop was Southern California. There he enrolled at John Muir College in Pasadena.

Campaigning to change community sexual mores with a sign and a sidewalk harangue has been a four-decade effort for Fred. His implacable efforts at John Muir to root out necking and petting on campus and dirty jokes in the classroom reached the pages of TIME magazine (11 June 1951). After being forbidden to preach on campus and getting removed at least once by police from college property, Fred finally found a following that cheered his defiance of authority when he returned to harangue from a sympathizer's lawn across the street. TIME speculated it might presage a movement back to more solid values by the younger generation. Phelps cashed in on the notoriety of the TIME article to become a traveling evangelist again-this time with more success than in Vernal.

In return for spending a week or two preaching at an established church or giving a revival, he would receive a bed, his meals, and a small stipend for gas to the next assignment. It was during one such ministry in Phoenix that he met his wife, Marge. She was a student at Arizona Bible School and an au-pair with the family that took in the itinerant evangelist. Today's Mrs. Phelps remembers being curious about the minister who'd been in TIME magazine. Laura Woods, the mistress of the house who gave voice lessons during the day, remembers Fred was the perfect guest. He helped build a room, mowed the lawn, made the beds, and washed the dishes, she said. When the couple decided to get married, Mrs. Woods made Marge Simms two dresses-a wedding gown and an outfit to travel in. They were married May 15, 1952. Laura and her husband, Arthur, remain friends today with Fred and Marge Phelps. The couple moved to Albuquerque for a year, where Marge kept house while Fred traveled a circuit around the Southwest-one that took him from Durango, Colorado to Tucson, Arizona. Fred Jr., the first of their thirteen children, was born May 4, 1953.

The family then lived in Sunnyslope, Arizona for a year while pastor Phelps continued his itinerant ministry. Mrs. Phelps was eight months pregnant with Mark when Pastor Leaford Cavin at the Eastside Baptist Church in Topeka invited Fred to come and preach.

On Fred Jr.'s first birthday, the family arrived in the Kansas capital to find it an auspicious day indeed: May 4, 1954 was the day the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its historic decision, Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, the landfall desegregation case which ruled separate but equal schools for blacks and whites were unconstitutional. The Pastor Phelps saw the coincidence of the Brown decision -just as he was deciding where to settle-as a sign telling him that Topeka was The Place. On that watershed day for America, if the new arrivals visited the state capitol building, perhaps Phelps was struck by the dramatic mural of the raging giant on the burning prairie, rifle in one hand, Bible (law book) in the other. Perhaps, as he has hinted, Pastor Phelps came to Topeka, saw it had become a national forum on black civil rights, saw the power of the legal profession, and decided it had fallen to him: Kansas would have a new John Brown.

CHAPTER FOUR

"Dog Days for the Pastor"

Before greatness could be thrust upon him, however, this new John Brown would suffer his dog days. At first, the new arrivals sailed smoothly into the Eastside Baptist community. Fred was roundly admired for his thunderous preaching, and was quickly hired an associate pastor. The ladies at Eastside all liked Marge and made the young mother welcome in their circles.

Things went swimmingly. The Eastside congregation was planning to open a new church across town, and it seemed natural when their pastor, Leaford Cavin, asked Fred to fill the job. The Eastside church issued bonds to purchase the property at 3701 12th Street. To help Brother Phelps get underway, the congregation re-roofed the building, painted it, and bought the songbooks necessary. A start-up group of about 50 former members of Eastside volunteered to attend services at Westboro. The church formally opened on May 20, 1956. Fred had it all. A fine church and a congregation of his own. What went wrong?

What did provides an insight into the man who craves a greater and greater role as a moral arbiter of our times. "We gave him his church; painted; roofed it; even bought his songbooks; and after only a few weeks, he turned on us," says a long-time member of Eastside. Apparently not everyone in Leaford Cavin's church was enthusiastic about Phelps. One from that time recalls Fred, Marge, 2 year-old Fred, Jr., and 10 month-old Mark were in the pews one Sunday with the rest of the congregation, listening to Cavin preach. Mark began squirming suddenly. To the appalled amazement of his fellow worshipers nearby, the junior pastor repeatedly slapped the infant across the face with an open palm and backhand, snapping Mark's tiny head to and fro. Afterwards, several of the men in the congregation confronted Fred and told him never to do that again. Mark Phelps laughs to hear that story relayed: "My mom once told me-proudly, as if she'd effected a big change in his behavior-that my father had beaten my older brother when he was only five months old. She said she'd argued with him about it and he'd agreed to hold off beating the kids till they were a year old." "Phelps was wrapped pretty tight, even back then," recalls an old member of Eastside. "He was very severe with his children and a lot of people didn't care for him. But we all thought he was a man of God."

Within weeks after receiving his new status, building, and congregation, Fred Phelps warmed on the hearth of Eastside's hospitality and but the hands that had helped him. He and Leaford Cavin had an almost immediate falling-out over whether God hated the sinner as well as the sin. "Today, Fred will tell you it was theological differences," says an acquaintance of Cavin, "but those differences didn't seem to bother him when he needed out help." Adds another: "Theological differences? Brother Cavin was a very staunch Baptist." But not staunch enough for Fred?

"I don't know if there ever was a man more strict than Leaford Cavin. Really, it was the anger in Fred, not doctrine, that caused him to act the way he did." When a man in Fred's new congregation came to him for marital counseling, the pastor recommended a good beating for the wife. The man followed his spiritual guide's advice.

Later, he called the pastor to ask for bail: apparently separation of church and state didn't apply to assault and battery. Phelps paid the confused Christian's bail, but stuck to his guns: a former members of the early Westboro community remembers the following Sunday Pastor Fred was fiery in his message that a good left hook makes for a right fine wife: "Brethren," preached Phelps, "they can lock us up, but we'll still do what the Bible tells us to do. Either our wives are going to obey, or we're going to beat them!" "Leaders," observes B.H. McAlister, the minister who ordained Fred, "break down into shepherd and sheep-herders. The first lead, the second drive the sheep. If love is absent, the pastor is one who drives the flock; with love, he leads it."

Mark remembers his father used to frequently tell of the time he purified the flock and paid the price for his courage. Apparently a female member of that early Westboro congregation was discovered having an affair with a soldier from Ft. Riley. Only the males in the congregation were allowed to vote, and the pastor prevailed upon them to cast the Madeleine from the midst. Away from the effects of his heated rhetoric, however, many of those swayed felt first remorse, then disgust at their part in the moral lynching. Mark remembers his father always referred to this incident to explain why his congregation had deserted him.

In later years, Phelps was convinced he was alone in his church with only his children to listen because those who'd opened Westboro were too weak for the harsh truth of God: that He hated sinners as well as the sin; and therefore His elect must also hate the sinners-even those who might be assembled with them. If the local Baptist churches were still unsure about the new fire and brimstone brother from Arizona, shooting his neighbor's dog didn't help. Aside from etching one of his children's earliest memories, shotgun-blasting the large German shepherd that had wandered into his unfenced yard quickly got the novice pastor notice in his community. The incident was discussed in the papers, and the dog's owner sued the arrogant minister. Fred defended himself and won, an action his son Mark believes may have encouraged his father's turn to the law.

But the irrationality and violence of the act sent the last of his congregation scurrying back to Eastside. For weeks after the shooting, one church member recalls, someone placed signs on the lawn in front of Westboro at night that declared prophetically: "Anyone who'd stoop to killing a dog someday will mistake a child for a dog." Soon it was clear no one wanted any part of Fred's god not if he hated like Fred. And that posed a problem for the Pastor Phelps: he still owed 32 dollars a week on the bonds for the church, and no one was paying for his hate show on Sundays.

To cover his mortgage and support his family, the failed pastor turned his pitch from God to vacuum cleaners. During the following five years, he went door-to-door in Topeka, selling those and baby carriages and, finally, insurance. In a pattern that held ominous overtones for the future, Phelps at some point sued almost everyone who employed him during that period.

He also carried on a running feud with Leaford Cavin at Eastside Baptist. Cavin spent several years trying to discover how to repair his mistake and stop the nightmare unfolding at the Westboro church. "Eastside held the mortgage on Westboro," remembers one churchgoer who was involved in the finances there, "and we always hoped Fred would miss a payment so we could foreclose. But he never did."

To save money, the pastor moved his wife and children into the church. Since the congregation at Westboro was essentially the Phelps family, Cavin convinced John Towle, county assessor, that Westboro should be taxed as private residence. The controversy was covered in the media, and the exemption for 3701 West 12th was lifted. But again the fighting Pastor Phelps taught himself enough about the law to successfully contest the decision before the Board of Tax Appeals. For good measure, he sued Cavin and Stauffer Communications for libel. He lost the suit, but the lines of his future had now been drawn: Fred Phelps had his castle and his church and he'd learned how to defend them.

His chosen community detested him, but that was to be expected when one was elect and immersed in a world of damned souls. Fred was content that his god hated those who questioned him. And he was content to remain in his private La Rochelle and sally forth occasionally to smite the reprobate. One old member of Eastside is philosophical about the feud with Pastor

Fred: "I'll tell you one thing, we can feel awfully lucky he turned down that slot at West Point. Right now, he'd probably be a general-with his finger on the button." It was during this period that the Pastor Phelps cut the final ties with his original family.

When talking with friends, Fred's father never discussed the son he had in Topeka, says Fred Stokes, a retired army officer who lives outside Meridian. Stokes was a close friend of the elder Phelps and a pallbearer at his funeral in 1977: "He had some fundamental beliefs that were unshakeable, but he didn't force them on anyone." In his later years, Stokes says, Fred's father was active in the Methodist Church. "He was a very kind, grand fatherly person. He was at peace with himself and didn't have any rancor toward anybody at the time of his death." Marks tells how his grandfather, Fred, (whose name he learned only recently from Capital-Journal reporters) once came to visit them in Topeka when Mark was a child. What he recalls most vividly is standing on the platform at the railroad station with his father and grandfather. As they waited to put him on the train back to Meridian, the preacher told the weeping old man never to come back, not to call, nor to write. "I remember my grandfather was crying. He told my father to get back in the Methodist Church and stop all this nonsense."

Pastor Phelps admits there was a rift between him and his father. "He was disappointed when I didn't go to West Point, which is understandable. He worked hard to get that appointment for me, and he was a very active Methodist, so he was disappointed in that. But my dad was a super guy that I loved deeply and I miss him." Relatives in Mississippi said the elder Phelps never really got over his abandonment by his son. "It grieved him a lot," remembers one.

When Pastor Phelps was 15 and in his last year of high school his father, 51, married a 39 year-old divorcee named Olive Briggs. The son would leave home soon after and grow up to be a fierce critic of divorce. Olive's sister, who didn't want her name used, said Olive was a kind Southern lady who never had children and treated Fred and his sister, Martha Jean, as if they were her own. The new Mrs. Phelps often talked to her sister about the trouble between the former railroad detective and his son, the Baptist preacher. "Olive would say he grieved over that every day of his life. That he never would have parted ways. It was his son who parted ways."

Other relatives recalled that, each year, the grandparents sent birthday and Christmas presents to their grandchildren in Topeka. Each year they were returned unopened. Photos of grandpa and grandma the pastor gave his extra touch: "When they once sent him pictures of themselves for us kids to have, I remember watching my dad cutting them meticulously into little pieces with a pair of scissors. Then he placed them in an envelope and mailed them back."

When the elder Phelps died in 1977, and Olive Briggs in 1985, of the two not inconsiderable wills, Fred's father left him one-eighth and his sister, seven-eighths. Fred's stepmother left her entire estate to Martha Jean. There would be no relatives dropping by from mother's side either. Though Marge Phelps had nine brothers and sisters still living in rural Missouri or nearby Kansas City, with one notable exception, her own children never met them or so much as knew their names. And the firm pastor forbade his children to play or talk with the rest of the youngsters in the neighborhood. Says Mark: "I wanted friends to share with and talk to, but felt it was the wrong thing and felt guilty. They would initiate conversation or want to play, and I would feel real scared and not know what to do or say. Sometimes I couldn't avoid talking, and it made me feel real uneasy and scared that I would get caught. "My dad used to make me go and tell the neighbor kids they couldn't play by the fence, or talk to us, or come in the yard. He'd say, "I'm tellin' you, if those fucking kids are in this yard again and I catch them, it's you I'm going to beat!"

"I used to have to fight the kids sometimes, or yell at them, or push them out of the yard; or I'd turn my back and ignore them so they wouldn't want to talk or be friendly and get me in trouble." While this is in keeping with the 'fortress Phelps' mentality the pastor embarked on shortly after opening Westboro, it is interesting to speculate how much of the strange goings-on within the fortress the pastor feared his children might reveal had they been allowed outside confidants. When Fred's sister, Martha Jean, and her husband, Fred's teenage best-buddy, John Capron, returned to the U.S. on a year sabbatical from their Indonesian mission, they came to see Fred. In part, they'd come to arrange a reconciliation between the brittle pastor and his devastated father.

They never got started. "He wouldn't even talk to me," Fred's sister told her nephew, Mark. The good pastor bid her also leave and never return. Mark remembers riding his bike along in the street, both curious and embarrassed, watching his aunt go weeping down the sidewalk for three blocks from their house.

With that, the vengeful minister had succeeded in cutting all lines leading to his captive congregation. Anyone in the outside world who might know of their existence or be concerned for their welfare had been driven off. After he had sold insurance for several years, Phelps had amassed enough commissions off the yearly premiums to allow him to stop working and go to law school. He had already transferred credits from Bob Jones and John Muir to Washburn, then taken course work there to receive his degree. Fred Phelps had guts. When he entered Washburn Law School, he had a wife and seven children. When he graduated, his family had grown by three.

Phelps was editor of the Law Review and star of the school's moot court. He is remembered by some of the faculty as perhaps the most brilliant student ever to pass through Washburn Law. If the public performance was impressive, however, the private life grew even more dark.

"It was a very rare occasion," says Mark, "when he would come anywhere in the house that the kids were. While he was studying the law, he'd fly into rages because we were making noise. Mom would hide us-for the good of all." In fact, Phelps began to spend more and more time in his bedroom, cut off from his family except when they were needed to run errands for him; cut off except for his wife, whom he forced to remain with him in his bedroom for days at a time. Apparently the pastor's sexual appetites were voracious, and his emotional dependency even greater: Says Mark, "Mom had to spend the major portion of her day sitting next to him in bed, trying to say the right things to keep him calm, while he bitched and moaned and complained and railed and carried on. "He left the older children to take care of the younger ones while he monopolized our mother's time and attention. We were literally left on our own for the major portion of our childhoods." While the pastor lolled now grossly overweight in his bed like some Ottoman pasha, rolling in his law books and 100 pounds of excess blubber, lecturing the wife and walls on the evils of the reprobate, wallowing in gluttony and goat-like sexual appetites, he resembled, not so much the John Brown of his earlier ambitions, as he did an esquired Jabba the Hut.

"The kids would sit in grime and scum and filth for hours at a time," says Mark, "tied into their high chairs or strollers by mom, for their safety, until she could sneak away from him to give them a diaper change, redo their ties, and set it up for the older kids to feed them, so she could get back to him.

"I remember when she'd come downstairs, all the kids would cluster around her like a swarm of bees, just to touch her and talk to her." Mark goes on: "I started doing most of the grocery shopping, by bike, with my brother Fred when I was only seven or eight, because our mom had such a hard time getting away. We had baskets on our bikes. We were given money but it was never enough. It was humiliating because we would hold up the line at the checkout while the cashiers would ask us what we wanted to keep or take back, and then they'd do the figuring for us," Mark sighs in the phone: "When he wanted a chicken dinner, he'd stay in bed and have me ride my bike two miles each way to get him one. He never thanked me. "We'd run errands for that, or he'd send us out for a piece of apple pie with cheese on it. And we had to get back fast. Damn fast, or he'd complain his apple pie wasn't hot enough. "It was a mile or two back, the pie riding in a mesh basket, and we had to get it to him hot." Mark pauses. "It's pretty unbelievable when I think about it. At breakfast, my father got bacon and eggs; the kids got oatmeal and grits. At dinner we'd have beans and rice while he ate chicken or hamburger. Now that I'm a father myself, that just seems incomprehensible to me. "My father had to take care of us each year when my mom went into the hospital to give birth. Whatever he had to do, he'd always lose his temper and start screaming.

"We'd be too scared of him to eat-and then he'd beat us for not eating. My saliva would not work when he was in the room and mom was gone, so, to clean our plates, we'd throw our food under the table or into our laps and flush it down the toilet later. "When he took care of us, I tried to stay out of the same room with him at all times. He would be real hard on the little ones when he dressed them. He'd push and jerk and tug real hard. My father was so impatient and unpredictable. You never knew what to expect or how to act." When the children did run into Jabba-the-Dad out of his bed, it was usually unpleasant. Mark tells of one such time: "The day my brother, Tim, was born, Fred, Jr., and I were in the dining room fooling around and Fred started to chase me out the back door. I ran right into my dad."

According to Mark, the pastor started screaming at them not to horse around. He punched both boys several times and ordered them outside to work in the yard. On his way out, Mark rounded a corner and inadvertently stumbled into his father a second time. Enraged, the pastor connected with a hook to the side of his son's head. Mark fell down dazed and stunned. The pastor began to kick him, and kept kicking him, but Mark couldn't get up. His father screamed at him to go out in the yard, but the boy's legs felt like jello and "the room was rolling in vertigo". Finally, his father left him there, sprawled and dazed like a defeated boxer. When Mark could stand up, he joined his older brother already at work.

Three hours later, their dad called them in. "He told us to get into bed and not to move. He told me to turn my face to the wall. For hours I lay like that, too scared to roll over because I thought he might still be standing there, watching me. Finally, I fell asleep.

"When we woke up the next day, we found he'd been at the hospital with mom the night before. And we had a new baby brother." Their father often slept all day and got up in the afternoon, remembers another Phelps child. "And then everyone would hide because 'daddy was up'. "He habitually had violent rages that included profane cursing, beyond any sailor's ability to curse, where he threw and broke anything he could get his hands on," states Mark. "My father routinely demolished the kitchen and dining room areas, as well as his bedroom. He would not only beat mom and the kids, he would smash dishes, glasses, anything breakable in sight; he'd even throw everything out of the refrigerator.

"He'd literally cover the floor with debris. I remember seeing so much broken crockery once it looked like an archeologists's dig. There was ketchup and mustard and mayonnaise splashed across the walls, cupboards, and floor like a paint bomb had gone off in there. "Afterwards he'd go upstairs to the bedroom-and force mom to go with him. It would take hours for us kids to clean up after his rages. He never helped-he'd just dump on us and leave.

"But he wouldn't stop raging. While we were cleaning the mess downstairs, he'd force mom to sit at his bedside upstairs while he continued to curse and complain to her about whatever had gotten his goat." Nate and Mark confirm the pastor's dish tantrums occurred regularly, usually once or twice a month. Sometimes there'd be several in one week.

"It established a life habit for me," says Mark. "Even today, the moment I get home, I'm thinking 'Is Daddy mad?' "Our walls were stained with food," he continues. "And my mom used to cry because she couldn't keep good dishes. My father would also bust holes in the walls and doors. If they were on the outside, he'd fix them quickly. On the inside, he'd leave them unrepaired for months.

"And, remember, whenever my father was beating us, or if he was tearing up a room, the violence might only last a few minutes, but he would keep up his tirade for hours on end. "I'm not exaggerating. My father would literally scream-not talk-scream-of-consciousness non-stop insults at us for hours. "His mouth was, for all the years I knew him, the most foul, vulgar, cursing mouth you've ever heard. There's nothing he wouldn't say, including cursing God openly. I watched him, one day, stand at the back of the church auditorium just outside the kitchen door, and literally jump up and down and scream curses at the top of his lungs, like a grown-up two year-old man." The content or nature of those tirades is instructive. If, in fact, Phelps did maintain this kind of vitriol for hours one end, it indicates an individual who is seriously clinically disturbed. Since one man's scandal might be another's vernacular, the Capital-Journal asked Mark and Nate for a sample of one of their father's marathon four-hour tirades. The following, if read in a loud and angry voice (not everyone can scream), will have a very different effect on one than if it is only scanned. It offers a sudden and shocking subjective experience of what it must be like inside the pastor's head-of the twisted rage and volcanic hate that must seethe in there-assuming the sample is accurate. Most functioning individuals are able to carry on the following Fauve impressionist vitriol for only a minute or so...Phelps reportedly maintained it for hours: Shitass, Goddam, tit-ass, piss-ass Goddam, ass-hole bastard, piece of shit, dick, son-of-a-bitch God forsaken filthy measly-assed piece of fucking shit Goddam horses ass. You're not worth shit. You're a no good, no account, God forsaken piss-assed little bastard. Get your ass in there and lean over that Goddam bed, you're going to get a licken. Bitch. Fucker. Prick, Fucker, Prick, Goddam fucker, Goddam prick, asshole, prick, prick, fucker, fucker, fucker, fucker, fuck you, you Goddam fucking piece of garbage. Go to hell. Fuck you. Go to hell. Prick. Fucker. GODDAMN YOU, you fucker. You worthless piece of shit. Goddam you, you worthless piece of shit of Goddam fucking shit. Fuck you. Go straight fucking to hell you Goddam fucking son-of-a-bitch. God Damn You! God Damn You!!! God Damn You!!! You Goddam asshole son-of-a- bitch. God Damn You! How dare you, you asshole bastard prick turd. You turd. You lying, mother fucking stinking piece of fucking shit. Fuck you, you lying sack of shit, you. Get the fuck out of my face. Go to hell. I hate you, you bastard. I hate you, you asshole. You Goddam prick asshole bastard, dick, piece of fucking rank stinking fucking garbage that's as full of shit as anyone could ever be. Get the hell out of here, you fucker. Fucker. Fucker. Go to fucking hell you bastard. Piss- ass. Horses ass. Goddam fucker. Fucker. Fucker. Fucker. Fucker. Fucker. FUCKER! FUCKER! FUCKER! Asshole. You bastard. You sick Goddam son-of-a- bitch. You worthless little bastard. You Goddam asshole prick bastard. God Damn It!! God Damn YOU!!! GOD DAMN YOU!!! Fuck you, you bastard. You're going to hell. You little Tit-ass. Shit-ass. Fucker Tit-ass. You little Shitass. Piss-ass little bastard. You Goddam little bastard, I'm going to teach you. Get the hell up there. Why did you do this to me? Say!! What's the big idea? What the hell do you think you're doing, bringing reproach on the church of the Lord Jesus Christ? I'm not going to put up with your sissified wimpy asshole ways. Shut up. God damn it. God damn it. God damn it. Keep those Goddam kids quiet. I'm not going to tell you again. What's the big idea making all of that Goddam racket? Say! Didn't I tell you to not make a fucking sound? You think you're so Goddam smart thinking for yourself, when I told you what the fuck I wanted. Keep those Goddam kids quiet or I'm going to beat the hell out of all of you, you bitch. You bastard. You bitch. Fuck you. Fuck you, God damn it. I'm going to beat the hell out of you; I warned you and now you're going to catch it. Where do you think you're going. Get the fuck back over here you son-of-a-bitch and take your beating like a man. Fucking asshole bastard son-of-a-bitch chicken shit piece of crap, no good little bastard. What the hell do you think you're doing, for Christ's sake? I'm not going to put up with you, do you understand me? Do you? I won't tolerate this bullshit. God Damn you!! I'll beat the living shit out of you. Watch it. I'm warning you. I warned you what I'd do. It's your own God Damn fault. I warned you, for Christ's sake. What's the big idea getting this family in trouble like this? I'll beat you until you can't stand up or sit down. God damn son-of-a-bitch, asshole. I told you what I'd do if you didn't get them Goddam grades up. You little prick. How do you like that? Does that hurt, does it? Goddam it, does it hurt? It better hurt. If it doesn't I'll make sure it hurts. Are you fucking crazy? Are you crazy? You must be insane. Jesus Christ, how many Goddam times am I going to have to beat you? When are you going to learn? Say! Say! Is that right? Is that right? When you are going to learn? You no account little bastard. In the old testament they used to take kids like you out and stone them to death. That's what you deserve. You ought to be taken out and stoned. At least parents in that time had some Goddam solution to a problem like you. That's what would cure you. You've been nothing but Goddam grief to your mother and I since the fucking day you were born. I wish you were dead. I hate you. Jesus Christ, I hate you. I can't stand you. I can't stand the sight of you. You're sniffing after some whore, for Christ's sake. You got your dick wet and now you've just gone crazy sniffing after that fucking whore. You hot blooded little bastard. Keep your Goddam pants on and keep your fucking dick inside. Horse piss, bullshit, balderdash, crap, lying bastard, son of belial, reprobate. ballamite, Goddam Horses Ass! God damn you God, you lying asshole letting them do this to me. God damn You God, how could you let them do this to me! What the hell do you think you're doing? God damn you God. You son-of-a-bitch. Hey you bitch, got any good words for me? You better say something or I'm going to kick the living shit out of you. Speak up. Say!!! What the hell good are you? Say, what the hell good are you? What the hell is on your Goddam mind? Speak the hell up. I'll slap the living shit out of you until you fucking can't see straight. You pussy whipped little bastard. You horse manure. Fuck you. Go to hell. You're going to hell. Go to hell. Shitass. Bastard. Bitch. Horses ass. God damn chicken shit bastard son-of-a-bitch little fucker, get the fuck out of my sight. You little chicken shit. You piece of garbage. You're God damn worthless. You'll never amount to a God damn thing. You're a loser and always will be. You go along fine for a while and then you do something like this to fuck it all up. You little asshole. You'll never amount to anything. You're a God damn loser. You'll end up in jail you God damn deadbeat. Shut your big dumb ape mouth, you look like some kind of fucking idiot with your big Goddam dumb mouth hanging open. I'll beat that foolishness out of you. Look at that foolishness leaving him, I can see it with every hit of this Goddam mattock. It does my heart good to hear those screams and see that foolishness leaving. What's the big idea doing that to me? Say! Why did you do this to me Say! Say! How could you treat me this way? How could you treat me this way you little bastard? What's the big idea? Say! I'm not going to put up with this kind of bullshit. You're going to get a beating. Lean over there Goddam it. You think I'm going to put up with you? You think I don't know how to deal with the likes of you, you God forsaken little bastard? We know how to deal with asshole kids like you. I'll beat you. I'll beat you like the Bible says to beat you and you won't die. Dammit woman, you know the Bible says that if you beat your child they won't die, so shut your Goddam mouth or I'll slap you. Do you want me to beat you fat ass? You Goddam hussy. You fat Goddam hussy. You'd think you could give me some Goddam fucking support instead of always fighting me and causing me all of this Goddam fucking grief. I'm not going to put up with your Goddam sassy mouth talking back to me or telling me what to do, you fucking bitch. I'm telling you; Goddam it; I'm warning you, I'm going to slap the hell of out of you; you're going to catch it if you don't shut your Goddam God forsaken mouth and back off. I'm not going to tell you again. The next time I'm going to turn my Goddam attention to you and you're going to be sorry. I'll cuff you around and give you a Goddam beating. Don't interfere with my beating of this Goddam bastard one more time. I want this fat off of that ass. I'm not going to put up with that fat ass. If you don't lose by tomorrow, you'll get another beating. I want that fat ass off of you, you fat bitch, you Goddam fat slut, do you get it, you think headed bitch?

"My sisters and brothers just stood around and shaked and farted and looked scared when dad was throwing a fit," brags Mark uncharacteristically. "but I learned how to control my fear by working with my hands and getting things done. "I used to stand in the back room of the house, which was called the dryer room, and fold clothes for hours upon hours. I learned to feel secure if I was getting something done that was bottom line."

The voice pauses. "Still, he'd wake us up at night with mom screaming from fear as he threw his fits. I'd come awake and lie there feeling afraid and upset. "I wasn't worried about being woken up, that he was upset, or even that he was hurting mom. I was worried about survival. About what could happen if it got worse. I was thinking about lying still in case he came in, so he wouldn't know I was awake. "Because, he was so crazy, we didn't know that someday he wouldn't kill us all." Back in those days, during the '60s, when Fred was in law school and then a young lawyer, the neighbors would often see Marge on the porch.

"She'd just be sitting out there, crying her heart out," remembers one former neighbor. "We all felt so sorry for her. But none of us ever went over there to comfort her. Her husband had us all intimidated." But if life with father was bad already-it was about to get worse. According to Mark, who was 10 when his father graduated, Fred Phelps became heavily dependent on amphetamines and barbituates while in law school. Every week for 6 years, from 1962-1967, their mother would give Mark a 20 dollar bill and ask him to go down and pick up his father's 'allergy medicine'. Mark always got the bottle of little red pills from 'the tall blond man' at the nearby pharmacy. He was told they were to 'help daddy wake up'.

He also picked up bottles of little yellow pills that were to 'help daddy get to sleep'. But the beast already so poorly penned within Fred now came out. Under the conflicting tug of speed that wouldn't wear off and the Darvon he'd taken to sleep, the Pastor Phelps would often wake his family in the middle of the night while doing his imitation of a whirling dervish whose shoes were tied together: "With all the drugs, he had very little body control," remembers Mark, "so we weren't really scared of him then. But he would fall and break the bed apart; get up and knock over all the bedroom furniture. "Mom would start screaming and call Freddy and me to help her get him under control and put the bed together.

"My dad's face would look totally stoned, and he couldn't focus his eyes. He couldn't walk in a straight line, and sometimes he couldn't even get up off the floor." Adds Nate: "Another time when he was stoned on drugs, my dad started going after my mom. She was yelling for help. My two older brothers, probably 12 and 13 at the time, went running upstairs and tried to force my dad back into his bedroom. He was ranting and raving like a lunatic. "They managed to get him inside his room and slammed the door shut and locked it from the outside. He started pounding on the door and screaming incoherently. "Finally, he actually broke the door down. That seemed to calm him a bit, and he fell back on the bed and passed out."

Without referring to his records, the pharmacist named by Mark immediately denied he had ever filled any kind of prescription for the Pastor Phelps-except once. Blessed with preternaturally accurate recall, the pharmacist claimed that, since 1962, he'd only filled one order for the pastor-a skin cream several years ago.

Questioned again later, the pharmacist admitted he'd been filling prescriptions written to Mrs. Phelps for decades. But he denied ever selling her amphetamines. According to Mark, the physician who wrote those prescriptions delivered all or most of the Phelps children, and was their family doctor when they were growing up. During the period in question, he at least twice reported his doctor bag stolen and its narcotics missing. The thieves were never caught. When this physician shot himself in a Topeka parking lot in 1979, he was under investigation for providing drugs illegally to his female patients in exchange for sexual favors. What kind of drugs?

Amphetamines. "There was fighting one night," Mark recalls. "In the middle of the night. Dad was stoned on drugs again. He shot the 12-gauge into a roll of insulation.

"It was probably a suicide attempt. Only my mom and he were in the bedroom, and it was during the middle of the night. "What I think happened was, he was so under the influence, he was so screwed up, and he was so mad that he was doing one of those things...you know...I'll show all of you...I'll just get rid of this whole problem by killing myself.

"And I think he just did it. I think he did it for the dramatics of it- of course, he missed. "After the incident, that roll of insulation sat in their bedroom for almost a year. "Our mom tried to keep things quiet and keep things contained," says Mark. "She acted as a mother to him as well as us. Having him in our family was like having a little 2 year-old in an adult's body-with an adult intellect. But it's a 2 year- old that can do whatever it wants, because there's no adult discipline, instruction, or correction involved. My father does not subject himself to accountability of any kind. "He didn't care about our mom, except for how she could meet his needs. He treated her like an animal.

"We had two dogs-Ahab and Jezebel. I used to throw rocks on top of their dog house and Ahab would viciously attack Jezebel. I thought it was funny. "That was the way my dad treated my mom. If anything would happen that my dad didn't like, he would beat on her, blame her, make her life miserable, and take it out on her-even if it was out of her control.

Mark remembers one morning when he was downstairs and heard a tremendous racket coming from their bedroom above. Furniture crashing. Fred screaming. Their mother begging him to stop. Then her screaming too. This went on for 20 minutes until finally his father stormed out. All quiet.

Mark stole up the stairs, afraid his father would come back. He peeked in. (At this point, Mark's voice breaks. It takes him a long time to describe this, speaking in short phrases, interrupted by long pauses to control his emotions.) The mattress was thrown from the bed. Sheets were ripped away. Drawers were flung out of the dresser, and the dresser kicked over. Lamps and tables, everything was smashed and strewn about the room.

"Mom?" he called. He couldn't see her. "Mom?" Mark heard a sob. Then a long, low agony moan. He walked stiffly into the mess. Picked his way across the floor. In the corner, behind an open closet door, he found his mother cowering. Her face in her hands as the sobs wracked her body, she told her frightened child over and over: "I can't take this anymore...I can't take this anymore...I can't take it...I don't know what I'm going to do..." For awhile she did nothing.

Mark remembers there were times when his mother would get out and go to the store, especially when his father was asleep: "She'd go to Butler's IGA. And after she'd go to the bowling alley and the little coffee shop there. Four or five times I saw her in there when she didn't know I did. It made me feel sad, because it was such a lonely thing to see her, sitting with that coffee and donut, and know it was her safe harbor, the only time she had alone. She looked so unhappy and despairing, sitting there staring at nothing, the coffee getting cold and the donut untouched." Then one winter Saturday afternoon when Mark was 9 years old, his mother called him over to her. She whispered: "I've had it. I can't take it. Would you get the children's clothes and load as much as you can in the trunk and the back seat?"

Mark packed the clothes in the old white Fairlane 4-door. When the pastor, luxuriating in his bed upstairs, fell asleep around 4 p.m., their mother came down softly. She had Mark gather the rest of the kids. "We're leaving," she told them. Somehow they all fit inside the car, the mother behind the wheel, and the 9 kids wherever they could find space.

"We looked ridiculous," admits Mark. "And I remember the toll-takers at the turnpike laughed at us. But I'll never forget that day...the feeling I got as we drove away from that house. "It was a cloudy day, and cold, but I remember feeling hopeful. Thinking we were headed to a new life. And it was going to be better than the one behind us."

Marge fled the good Pastor Phelps with her flock to Kansas City. She went to her sister Dorotha's apartment. Most of her original family hadn't seen Marge in 15 years, not since she'd left for school in Arizona. Dorotha's Profitt's husband drove a truck for a renderer, a business that collected dead animals for glue. Marge Phelps' sister no doubt gave her the bad news: driving for a rendering company didn't bring in enough to feed 10 extra mouths; and the apartment couldn't possibly hold them all; she couldn't stay there... In fact, there was no place for a pregnant woman with 9 children to run except back to the man who beat her, but paid the bills. Mark remembers his mother stoically dialing the number for the Westboro church. Silently, the children crawled back into their niches among the clothes-filled car. When they arrived home that night, the pastor was waiting for them. His son recalls he had arms folded and he was smiling. It was a cold leer that Mark will never forget: "It was smug, it was cruel; and it said, 'there is no escape'."

CHAPTER FIVE

"The Children's Crusade"

The pastor's heavy drug use continued from 1962 until late 1967 or early 1968, according to Mark Phelps. Confined to itself and tormented by an increasingly explosive, abusive, and erratic father, the family hung on day-to-day. Finally, Fred's system could no longer withstand being wrenched up by reds in the morning and jerked down by barbituates at night. One day, he didn't wake up. Mark remembers seeing the long, gray ambulance in the driveway. His father had slipped into a coma from toxic drug abuse. Fred Phelps remained in the hospital for a week, while Mrs. Phelps told the children he had suffered an adverse reaction to an 'allergy medicine'.

When he emerged, Phelps was drug-free and powerfully resolved to regain control of his body. If it was the temple to his soul, he had neglected it. With an astounding strength of will, he immediately plunged into a water-only fast, dropping from 265 to 135 in 47 days. During the fast, "he looked like a scarecrow," says Mark. "He stalked about the house with a scarf around his head, clutching a bible to his chest." But the Pastor Phelps broke his addiction and never relapsed. To keep his weight down, he turned first to health foods and then to running. Emaciated at 135, Phelps today is a trim 185 on a 6'3" frame. One day, after he had been running for some time, the pastor read about the new science of aerobics on the back of a Wheaties box and decided the entire family should join him. Fred loaded the ten oldest children in the station wagon, drove them to the Topeka High track, and, not unlike Fred's Foreign Legion, ordered them to march or die. Actually, they were told to run or get beaten. Their ages when this concurred were 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 16. Of the three youngest, two were little girls. They were forced to run five miles a day-sun, rain, or snow-and then the pastor upped it to ten. By the summer of 1970 a year later, Phelps decided they were ready for the marathon. Every weeknight the 10 children, now aged 6 through 17, ran 10 miles around the track. On Saturdays they ran a marathon. Only on Sundays were they allowed to rest. "We'd run from the courthouse in Topeka, down Highway 40 to the courthouse in Lawrence," says Mark. "Or from Topeka to Valley Falls or St. Mary's. My mom would follow with the three toddlers in the station wagon, going up to the lead, and coming back to the stragglers." According to Mark, that lead runner was usually him, with the pastor a distant second. "I was the ultimate yes-man all the time I was growing up," he confides, "but not that. I decided every time we ran I was going to beat him-do it bad." And run he did. Mark reports that, by the time the family entered the Heart of America marathon in Columbia, Missouri, he was climbing off his daily 10-mile training runs in 60 minutes. He placed 17th overall in the Columbia race. He was only 16 years old. Tim, the six year-old who'd turned seven a few weeks before the race, finished last behind his father and nine siblings. It took him seven hours to complete the course. "It's one of the more difficult runs in the U.S.," observes Mark Thomas, owner of Tri-Tech Sports in Lenexa, Kansas. He has spent over 20 years as an athlete and sports consultant. On his staff are current and former members of the U.S. National Biathlon and Triathlon Teams.

He remembers the 1970 Heart of America race. A runner's club he had organized in Sedalia, Missouri competed there. "I remember several in our group came back disgusted as what they had seen. Apparently some of the smaller Phelps children had told them they weren't running voluntarily." In general, says Mark Thomas, experts don't recommend running marathons under age 16. (Prominent sports physicians contacted by the Capital-Journal concur, but they declined to be named in an article on Fred Phelps.) "It's just not a wise idea, especially for a six year-old," continues Thomas. "Even without medical advice, common sense and a minimum of parental concern is all you need to see the stupidity of that,"

Among the potential negatives reviewed were soft tissue damage; developmental problems in the knee joints; high vulnerability to fatal heat stroke; and hitting the 'wall' (running out of glycogen) long before the adult limit at 20 miles. The last is important, advise sports doctors. A small child forced to run through the physical agony of their 'wall' can be emotionally damaged by the experience. To put it simply, forcing six, seven, and eight year-old children to run 26 miles is nothing short of brutally abusive. However, Runner's World found the running Phelps newsworthy, not once-but twice. They were featured in an article about the Columbia marathon in the November, 1970 issue, and again in November, 1988. Though Pastor Phelps had given up speed and downers, ate healthy, and ran daily, the radical mood swings, rages, and aggression remained "One day my father and I were running down at the track inside the YMCA. There was an old blind man who always jogged on the inside lane because he could feel the edge of the track with his cane. "My father was in a sour mood that day, and the old man was weaving a bit as he worked his way around the track with his stick to guide him. My father began to threaten him each time he lapped him, telling the blind jogger if he didn't stay out of my father's way, my father would knock him out of the way. "Finally, the old man started crying. He left the track and stood there crying-I guess what were tears of frustration-and then he left. "I never saw him back there again."

Phelps was also a poor loser, according to his sons. Sometimes Mark and the pastor would go on long runs around the town. They started to race on the home-stretch once, and Mark beat him back by several blocks. At first his father took it with grace, says Mark, observing his son 'has really shifted gears and left him behind'. Minutes later however, when were standing in the kitchen, each with a large glass of icewater, suddenly the elder Phelps flung his hard fist into his son's face. And stalked out.

If his body was healthy, Pastor Phelps had yet to achieve wealthy and wise. More trouble was ahead for him-money trouble. According to Mark, in 1968 their finances were still very tight, even though Fred had passed the bar. The son remembers his mother opening the mail one day and showing him a $100 check. "It's all we have for a month," she told him, and she started crying.

Later, the pastor was melting some World's Finest Chocolate to make chocolate milk. In the midst of stirring it, he suggested someone should take the rest of the candy and see if they couldn't sell it around the neighborhood. Mark jumped at the chance "I watched my mom cry and cry when the checking and savings accounts were empty. I watched her cry when the mail box didn't have a check in it because dad hadn't worked in so long. "So I worked. I worked so my dad would like me. I worked so mom would love me. I worked so dad wouldn't beat me. I worked so I would feel like I was on the team. I worked when dad was throwing his rages. I worked when I saw mom crying. I worked because mom said, 'you're my good little helper, and I need you to do this because I have to be with him'. I worked because mom would cozy up to me and ask me to work, like a confidant and partner would ask another close partner to stand with them to get through a tough circumstance. But it was never enough." Not long after, Fred Phelps was suspended from the bar two years for cheating and exploiting his clients. During that period, the candy sales would be the family's only source of income.

The Phelps children were up to the challenge "Basically, we had to raise ourselves," says Mark. "It would have been a lot easier if we'd just been left alone to do our own parenting, but we also had to look out for a crazy father. I mentioned Fred Jr. and I began doing all the grocery shopping when we were only six and seven years-old? And the kids did all the household chores? So, working for a living we just took in stride with the rest of our adult responsibilities."

During the school year, Mrs. Phelps would pick the children up after class and take them directly to that day's targeted area. The vertically challenged sales staff would then divide into teams of two or three for safety, canvassing neighborhood homes and businesses. Every hour, they would rendezvous back at the LZ for resupply from mom at the station wagon. Workshifts on weeknights went from 3 30 to 8 p.m. On weekends and during the summer, the candykrieg blitzed major metropoles within a 4-hour drive of Topeka Kansas City, Lawrence, Wichita, Omaha, and St. Joseph. Hours, including wake-up, preparations, and transport, stretched from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. "There were a lot of times when we would be out there well after dark, and snow was on the ground," says Nate. The Phelps family selling candy door-to-door at night and in the snow attracted the attention of Topeka police, who received occasional queries about the welfare of the children, a law enforcement source recalls. But detectives found no violation of the law, and no charges were ever filed. "We sold candy, and we sold candy," observes Mark.

"It was an art," agrees Nate. Family loyalists Margie, Jonathon, and Shirley are quick to defend their memories. Public sales taught them a lot about the world outside their church, they insist. And they learned a good deal about human nature, adds Margie. Today, the Phelps children are full of stories about their adventures on candy crusade.

Jonathon and Rachel tell of selling in a bad part of Kansas City one night and realizing the women on the sidewalks around them were actually men. The boy is father to the man, and Jonathon immediately held forth with the latest 'fag' joke making the rounds at his junior high. One transvestite pulled a switchblade and gave chase. Jonathon grabbed little Rachel (age 8) and, clutching their boxes under their arms, they fled down an alley pursued by the man in high heels.

Jonathon, say Shirley and Margie, laughing till tears come to their eyes, can still remember the sound of the candy rattling inside his boxes and the click of high heels on pavement behind him. The end of the tale? It was a blind alley. Jonathon Phelps got 'bitch-slapped' by a guy in a dress to teach him a lesson, chokes Margie. Many of the stories center around Tim, the youngest Phelps son-the tough little kid who spent his sixth year training for the marathon. According to the Phelps sisters, 9 year-old Tim was slightly built, with red hair, a freckled face, and big blue eyes. But he had a booming voice that belied his frail size and innocent appearance. "He sold the most candy, by far," says Margie. "He did it on cute." Once, giving his carnival pitch in his King Kong voice on a crowded elevator at the Merchants' Bank in Topeka, Tim overwhelmed a modeling scout who happened to be riding down with him. The scout got him a job in a television ad for Payless Shoes. On another occasion, the host of a radio show in Wichita heard Tim hawking his Coco Clusters one night, and invited the lad to open the show. So Tim did, bellowing out "It's Diiiiiiick Riiiiiiipy!" The owner of a restaurant in North Topeka felt sorry for Tim, his sisters report. Whenever Tim went there, the man always bought all of his candy, then gave him a coke and let him sit at a table to rest his feet and daydream. One night when he was doing just that, Tim overhead a diner speaking ill of his father. Up popped the little boy, gripping his ice-cold glass. Determinedly, he marched over the offending table and flung the Coke in the surprised man's face. If the diner was outraged, he was in for another surprise the restaurant's owner kicked him out and let Tim stay.

"During those years," Margie observes, "we learned more about dealing with people than most learn during their entire lifetime." While Mark and Nate also have funny stories to tell from their time on the candyblitz, according to them, the Phelps' sisters are selective in their recollections.

At first, say the brothers outcast, their father asked them to sell on commission. "That didn't last very long," adds Mark. "One night we came home and he said he'd changed his mind-he wanted us to hand over our share. We kids were reluctant at first. We'd worked hard for it and now he was going back on his word. Then he went into a rage and-believe me-we turned it over real quick." From there, things went from bad to worse. The former door-to-door vendor of baby carriages and vacuum cleaners knew about sales quotas and target volumes. "If we sold enough candy that day, my fatherwould be in a good mood that evening and everyone could relax. But if we came back not having generated the amount expected, my father would take it and then get real moody. Sooner or later, he'd find something to get mad about and one of us would get a beating that night." Mark goes on to explain how he became the 'bull' in charge of motivation in the field. If one of his siblings hadn't sold their share of the candy, in the car on the way home suffered the 'chin- chin'. The offender, sitting in back, had to lean forward and rest their chin on the front seat. Mark, sitting in front, would then slug them in the face. The laggard peddler was called to justice by the harsh command (So-and-so) Chin-chin! "We never celebrated the holidays." Mark's voice is sad with memory. "We sold candy instead. You know the only Christmas cheer I ever saw as a kid? Sometimes I'd ring the bell and there'd be a big gathering inside for Christmas dinner and they'd invite me in and give me pie or a plate of food. I'd sit there and eat and watch everyone and wish it were my family and that I never had to leave." Sources connected to law enforcement assure the Capital- Journal that Margie's glowing memories of the candy campaign are indeed selective. Because of the mounting pressure from their father to return with larger cash sums, the children allegedly began to steal from purses and unwatched registers in the offices and businesses they frequented to sell their sweets. In many of the cases, complaints were filed with statements from eyewitnesses. Nate Phelps admits he was one of the thieves. He seems ashamed, though he never spent the money on himself-although in a way he did When the day's take was disappointing, it was often Nate who drew the black ball in the pastor's secret lottery for violent retribution. Among police sources, another Phelps child is remembered as having the hottest hands. That child was allegedly connected to purse pilfering in a legion of stores. On one occasion, the culprit was questioned by juvenile officers concerning cash theft from the old historical museum on 10th and Jackson in Topeka. Allegedly the child then confessed to a string of similar crimes. Charges were never filed, say law enforcement sources, not even in the museum case. Apparently no one in the D.A.'s office wanted to tangle with Fred Phelps or his children unless the crime was serious and the evidence airtight.

But if the Westboro Baptist Church's gang of urchin vendors is remembered for anything by law enforcement officials, it is their alleged raid on the general offices of the Santa Fe Railroad. There, on three separate floors, witnesses observed one child allegedly distracting employees while other Phelps children allegedly rifled those employees' purses. Nate Phelps states he knew nothing about that caper.

According to sources, the reports of theft grew so numerous that Topeka police suspected the Pastor Phelps of running a 'Fagin operation' (from the character of that name in the film "Oliver" an older man provides food and shelter to a horde of orphans and street urchins in return for their working as pickpockets).

Both Nate and Mark Phelps insist this was not the case. The stealing was strictly the kids' idea, they say. But it was usually done to top off the kitty so they wouldn't get beaten. "My family sold candy from 1968 until 1975," says Nate, "and some of those places we'd gone into a hundred times. By then, everyone knew the candy sale was a scam. But, even if I'd been told 'no' a hundred times, I still had to go back eventually for the 101st. And, if they said 'no', I still had to bring home cash to show my dad. So..." In the evenings, reports the boys, if their father didn't fall into a rage and select one of his children out for a beating, then he usually remained upstairs in bed-and demanded his wife stay with him. Whether it was to listen to his tirades or 'comfort' him (Fred's biblical euphemism for, one trusts, the missionary position exclusively), the result was the children were left nightly to their own resources.

Since most of them were unable to care for themselves, and Mrs. Phelps no longer tied the younger ones in their high chairs while she was gone, the older kids had their hands full downstairs. "Just trying to control the younger ones, and get them down for the night without any noise to piss the old man off was task," says Nate.

As a consequence, the house was frequently left uncleaned. Then, in the middle of the night, the Pastor Phelps would "wake us screaming and cursing and raging," says Mark, "hollering we had all gone to bed without properly cleaning everything. He would have us do a thorough cleaning of the house then, between 2 30 and 4 00 a.m. While that was going on, he would come up behind and kick us, push us into walls, hit us with hand and fist on the head, beat us.

"He would make us vacuum around the edges and cracks, wash dishes, etc. I would get up shaking physically from the sudden awakening, and from getting out of bed so quickly in such a frightening situation. "I would be real scared and try to work hard and fast, so he wouldn't do any more than he'd already done. I'd try to appease him quickly so he'd calm down and stop his violence.

"It's weird how you can feel secure in a situation like that. I'd work hard to get warm, and the concentration and physical work would help me get through the fear and back to a point where I felt relief from the intense anxiety and shaking." Mark continues "My father would usually quiet down before the cleaning was done. He'd go back to doing what he wanted watching television and eating in bed. It was such a relief when he'd gone back upstairs, that a lot of my siblings would knock off and stop working. "I was too mad and upset to do that. I would keep working a lot longer. I was real mad, and I was going to work and work and work until he apologized, or at least until I showed him that I could take whatever he did to me."

Even after a night like that, reveille was always at 5 a.m. in the Phelps household, adds Mark. "He'd take his big brass bell and go through the house ringing it with a great big grin on his face." Five a.m. brought more chores and errands before going off to school, say the boys. After class their mom would pick them up for candy sales until 8 p.m. As soon as they got home, they'd have to change into their running clothes, drive to the Topeka High track, and stride out 10 miles.

The runner would not return home and clean up before 10 or 10 30. After that came dinner. "Our family never ate together," says Nate. "Mom or one of our sisters usually made something and left it on the stove for people to eat when they got the chance."

Sometime after dinner and before they fell asleep, the children were expected to cover their homework. Trying to stay awake for that, after having run 10 miles, humped over suburban hill and dale selling peanut brittle, and spent a day at school, was frequently physically impossible. Yet, if they brought home bad grades, they were beaten and savage abandon.

In addition, it was usually during the homework period from 10 30 to 1 a.m. that their father would go on a rampage, or their mom would be called up to him and leave the babies with the older kids. With this as their daily schedule, Fred Phelps allowed his young family an average of only four to six hours of sleep each night. "In general, he was happy to keep us busy or gone," observes Nate.

Mark agrees "My father could tolerate no human needs outside his own. If you had a problem, it was not appropriate to turn to a parent for comfort, advice, or a solution. He would get outraged whenever one of us had some difficulty that focused attention off himself. To have a problem was to get a beating, regardless of what kind of a problem it was, or even if it wasn't your fault.

And if it was? Mark takes a deep breath. He recalls one time very clearly when he drew attention to himself. "One night, Nate and I were out selling candy together. We were in a residential area, and while we were selling, we'd unscrew a tiny Christmas light from the evergreens outside people's houses. One of those tiny bulbs on a string? "We were only doing it occasionally for kicks. We'd 'launch' them over the street and listen to them pop on the pavement. We didn't think anything about it. Nate was 10 and I was 14. "Well, I remember very clearly when we got home. I walked into the dining room where the bottom of the stairs were, going up to his bedroom. He was coming down those stairs just as I came in. "Mainly I remember the look on his face. He said, 'Who was selling on Prairie Road tonight?' "It took me a few seconds to register that, first of all, he was really angry, and secondly, it was Nate and me who had been selling on Prairie Road that night. I got sick to my stomach immediately. I remember the intense fear that came over me. I didn't know much yet, but between the look on his face and the questions, I knew something was wrong." Nate Phelps "Nobody answered. He asked again. By that time, Mom had come in. Her face was white. She said, 'Why?'" Mark Phelps "He said, 'I got a call from some guy who told me that there were two boys that had come by his house tonight, and that he was a retired police detective. Was this the church that the boys were selling candy for. I told them it was, and asked why. He told me that, he was sorry to have to report it, but that I should know the boys were stealing light bulbs from Christmas trees and then trying to sell them door-to-door. Who was it?' (The truth was, we were at the time also selling 'Paul Revere' light bulbs that had a lifetime guarantee). Before I could say a word, someone told him that it was Nate and I. He said, 'Let's go.'"

Mark Phelps "We went upstairs. He never asked me or Nate one word about whether it was true. He never asked us for our side of the story. All he said, after we got upstairs was, 'How could you endanger the church like that, after all the problems we have? How could you do it, bring reproach on the church like that?'" Nate Phelps "By that time, I was so scared, all I can remember saying was, 'I'm sorry, Daddy. We didn't mean it. We're so sorry'." What followed was the brutal, 200- stroke beating with the mattock handle described at the beginning of Chapter Two. Nate proceeds to describe more of life in the house of Fagin. His father would pass through periods of manic, frenetic activity and bombast, then spend days in bed, watching television and eating as he had in his days of obesity. Despite their full schedules of school, running, and child labor, the pastor had yet one more task for his offspring during his days abed he kept a bell on his headboard to ring for service. "For food, or drink, or Mom, or even the tiniest thing," remembers Nate.

"He just wouldn't get out of bed. And we'd all try to avoid going up there. Eventually, he'd get really mad and ring and ring and one of us would have to go. It would usually turn out he wanted a glass of water or something like that-only a few steps away." It would seem to be reminiscent of their father's Jabba-the-Hut days, when the fat pastor sent his eight and nine year-old sons out, four miles round-trip on their bicycles, to fetch him a chicken dinner or a piece of hot apple pie while he wallowed in bed-except Fred Phelps no longer ate those kind of things with a newly experimental palate, he was in hot pursuit of his fading youth. His eye on Methuselah, he was searching out new foods that, paradoxically, might postpone his assured arrival among the elect in the heaven of his hating god. If the children living in the house of Fagin already performed the functions of domestic servants, financial underwriters, and kickbags, now they also had to endure the role of lab rats for Fred's eccentric diets a-la-Ponce-de-Leon. Returning from their 10-mile runs after 10 p.m. each night, not having eaten since noon lunch at school and having paced the pavements for five hours selling candy, the starving children of the earnest Pastor Phelps frequently faced such enticing entrees and one-half head of steamed cabbage and a handful of brewer's yeast tablets. Nate remembers

"He'd read a book and one month we'd get nothing but raw eggs in a glass twice a day. Then he'd read another book and we weren't to eat eggs, period." Nate has a different perspective on Margie's charming tale about the curds and whey

"My father would buy a sack of powered milk and mix it with water in a five gallon stainless steel pot. Then he'd leave it uncovered for a week beneath the stairs. After it smelled enough to make you throw up, he'd skim the curds off the top and make us eat it in bowls. It smelled so horrible, some of the kids would have to go in the bathroom and vomit." Given the massive caloric cost of being teenagers, walking a sales route, and running 10 miles each day, it's no surprise the Phelps children turned to the nearest, richest source of calories to satisfy their needs the candy they carried at work and which was stored in their very bedrooms. For a period of about six years, the brothers report, the sweets they sold were also the principal element in their diet. So principal, that some of the children began to gain weight. This visible development, particularly in Nate and his sister, Katherine, caused the pastor great upset, says Nate. First, after his own successful battle against obesity, Fred Phelps had little patience for it elsewhere in the family; second, the Captain suspected some of the crew might be eating the strawberries. Jonathon Phelps admits he was of them "You don't muzzle the oxen when you want them to tread the grain," he remembers with a laugh. It is difficult to imagine anyone who runs 10 miles a day becoming obese. In fact, Nate reports that, at the time his father imposed his Nazi Weight Loss program, the teenager was 5'10" and 185. Not leathery and lean, but not worthy of comment on a large-boned male. But to the pastor Phelps, that extra thickness on his son meant thinner profits from the children's crusade. So, in what, for those who didn't have to endure it, may begin to read like a Marx Brothers script, Fred Phelps took steps. He designed a weight-loss regimen for Nate and Kathy. "We were required to weigh ourselves in front of him each night," says Nate. "On his doctor's scales sitting outside his bedroom. If we didn't weigh less than we had the day before, we got beat." Sometimes the two were beaten every night of the week with the mattock.

"I'd eat lunch," Nate says, "but I'd throw up before going home. Or take Ex-Lax. So would Kathy. His expectations were impossible, so we learned to manipulate the scales. "We'd place a small piece of tape with several metal nuts attached in the palm of our hand. As we stepped onto the scales, we'd stick the tape to the backside of the balance beam. This would show our weight to be lower than it actually was. "Unfortunately, one day the tape wouldn't stick properly and fell down. The old man didn't see it fall, but he did see that my weight was eight pounds higher than expected. "'You've been eatin' my goddamed candy again!' he yelled.

"This led to an 10 hour ordeal of beatings, followed by marathon running sessions, followed by more beatings, followed by running. "The net result was that, at the end of the day, I'd lost 14 pounds and seriously injured my hip. The irony is that, since that weight loss was all fluid dehydration, when I replaced the fluids, I regained the weight. But I didn't know that, and neither did my father."

The next day, when Nate had mysteriously shot up 14 pounds, the vexed pastor fell into the frustrated fury reserved for benighted reformers, and son Nate got beaten once more. The incident manifests Pastor Phelps' trademark career combination of ignorance and violence. Afterwards, the teenager was literally forbidden to eat until he lost those extra pounds. Breakfast, Nate never got after that. And when the family lined up for the food cooked in the great pots, Nate wasn't allowed to eat with them. If the menu called for cabbage, curds, or liver pills, his siblings would envy him. But if Fred relented, and something tasty awaited the hungry children-chicken spaghetti, or stew- Nate was never given any.

Today, the man is philosophical about the trials of the boy "I'd just sneak food from the fridge later, or eat candy from the boxes," he observes. Incredibly, this father-enforced fast went on for five years. All the while, Nate's weight continued the same, and the pastor continued to accuse him of eating candy.

"Well...duh!" laughs Nate today. "If, after five years, I was still alive, I must have been eating something, right?" On his daughter, Kathy, the good pastor imposed an even harsher solution she was locked in her room for the biblical 40 days, given only water to drink, and allowed exit only to the bathroom.

Kathy is the oldest daughter and the third-oldest child. She shared a bedroom with Shirley and Margie, the fourth and fifth of the Phelps kids. All three were close at the time. Both Nate and Mark remember that either Margie or Shirley once smuggled Kathy a glass of tomato juice. Fred caught his eldest daughter with it after she'd taken it to her room.

When Kathy refused to tell who'd given her the tomato juice, the boys report their father yelled and swore and beat her for nearly two hours. They remark it was one of the worst beatings she ever received. It was delivered by both fist and mattock handle to what was, literally, a starving teenage girl. Even Mrs. Phelps was not immune to the weight- watcher from hell.

"He got mad at her once. Said she was getting too fat," remembers Mark. "Right in front of me, he beat her with the mattock. I mean...it was a real...real degrading, humiliating kind of experience to watch your mother treated like that." Fred Phelps wears a bullet-proof vest to all his pickets yet his new-found notoriety may not hit him in the chest, as he fears.

No, if fame hath its costs, the pastor may need a padlock for his checkbook, for ancient creditors do stir. The man who stands so self- righteously on streetcorners daily, denouncing the sins of others, it seems forgot to pay for a lot of candy. When sued for payment by his suppliers, the spiritual leader of the Westboro Baptist Church claimed under oath that the candy received was broken, stale, and melted; consequently, it was unsuitable for sale. The fact that his children had already sold it was considered a testimony to their upbringing. However, since it had been sold and there was none to return, the court decided the pastor should pay for the 'melted' candy, irrespective of whether Topekans in the gallery were eating peanut brittle or peanut puddles. Joe Sanders, of the Money Tree Candy Co., in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to whom alone Fred still owes $20,000, including simple interest, has retained a lawyer to resuscitate the debt. "Back in '72, we got a court lien, but we could never find his account," Sanders explains.

Mr. Sanders may find Mark and Nate Phelps willing to testify how their father coached them perjury, suggesting the impressionable teenagers state under oath that the candy, which was fresh and good, was in fact stale and melted. This litany of greed is not yet done.

After two years of the candy sales, the house of Fagin diversified. A notice was placed in the paper asking for pianos to be donated to an unspecified church. Another notice was placed in the sales' column, advertising pianos. According to Mark and Nate, this arrangement flourished from 1971 through 1972, until someone in the Attorney General's office connected the two ads. Fred was ordered to stop. And did.

"But we moved a lot of pianos before then. And we made 150 to 200 bucks each from them," says Mark. Also, starting in 1970, for three summers, Mark and his older brother, Fred, Jr., were cut loose from the candy sales to run a new Phelps enterprise, a lawn care/trash hauling general clean-up business. Mark describes it

"At age 16, I had a pick-up and my brother had a pick-up, and we had three lawn mowers. My dad paid for these items from our work selling candy. "He was dispatcher and the scheduler. We were the ones that did the work. He arranged things so tightly, we just plain worked our butts off from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m.

"He'd rush us out before dawn, no showers, no breakfast, and we'd be out to the dump to empty our trucks and begin our first job. "He wouldn't budget us money, nor schedule us time for lunch. My dad had me so intimidated, I would have gone along with it, but Fred Jr. usually said otherwise. He'd insist we take time and dollars to go to McDonald's. Then I'd have to overbid the next job, and we'd have to finish early so our dad wouldn't catch us."

The children's candy crusade at Westboro Baptist carried on for seven years, from 1968 to 1975. Its stated purpose was to raise money for a new organ in the church. The one finally purchased had two keyboards and nine to twelve foot pedals, say Mark, who, along with Fred, Jr., played it at church services. "It was a Baldwin."

The equivalent organ today sells for around $4,000, far more than it did 20 years ago. During the later years of the fundraising campaign, Pastor Phelps claimed the church needed the money for a new carpet. At, say, 100 square yards, it would cost $3,000 to lay a moderately priced carpet in the present church, far more again than in 1973.

The target goal of the fundraising could then be safely placed at $7,000. Mark and Nate Phelps have submitted their estimates of the daily cash flow volumes during the candy sales from 1968-1975. These are not wild guesses, as Mark was the accountant for the operation he collected the money and counted it at the end of each day.

Candy that was sold to our best recollections estimated dollars

half the year, 1968 $22,710

The entire year, 1969$45,420

1970$45,420

1971$45,420

1972$45,420

1973$45,420

1974$45,420

Half the year, 1975$22,710

Estimated total dollars from candy sales:$317,940.

We estimate the average dollar amount sold for the specified days:

Weeknights during the school year$75/night

Saturdays during school year$300/Saturday

Six days a week during the summer$220/day

Based on this, you can follow the figuring below:

Nine months of the school year, approximately would be:

Five week night x $75/night = $375

Saturdays$300

Total per week$675$

675 x 36 weeks, approximately $24,300

Three months of summer months, approximately would be:

$220 x six days = $1,320 per week

$1320 x 16 weeks = $21,120

$24,300+$21,120 = $45,420/year

As one can see, $318,000 does significantly overshoot the stated goal's estimated cost of $7,000. Which leaves $311,000 unaccounted for, plus the income from the piano sales.

The candy was marked up 100 to 200 percent from the suppliers' price. Assuming an average 150 percent markup, $191,000 went to the Phelpses and $127,000 to their suppliers. But a cursory search of local court records for the years 1971 to 1974 alone turned up almost $11,000 in unpaid debt to three separate candy companies.

According to Joe Sanders at the Money Tree Candy Co., the Pastor Phelps placed an order with them in 1971. The company first sent him only a small order to determine if he was trustworthy. When they received payment, they were happy to fill a much larger order, one amounting to thousands of dollars. They never got their money.

Sanders believes the Pastor Phelps may have been running a scam where he paid for the first order and stiffed the suppliers on a much larger second one. "There were so many candy distributors back then, it would have taken him years to work through the list," observes Sanders. Most of those suppliers have long since gone out of business. Their records disappeared with them. But, if a cursory local spot check can show that almost 10 percent of Fred Phelps' debt to his suppliers went unpaid, the inquiring mind might ask how many other companies never went to court, but accepted partial payment or wrote it off as a bad debt. Assuming the boys' estimates upon which these figures are based are correct-and that as equal a portion of unpaid debts were written off as went to court-a very rough guess of the income off candy sales for the seven years, 1968-1975, would be $210,000-or $30,000 a year. Twenty-five years ago, that was nearly three times the annual salary of the average Topekan. Some organ. Some rug.

What happened to the rest? "It's obvious isn't it? says Nate. "We used it to live on." In fact, Pastor Phelps defrauded his community of over $200,000 earmarked for a non-profit religious enterprise. It was instead consumed as personal income without paying a single rusty penny in taxes.

While a church must originally file an exemption from income tax as a non-profit organization, separation of church and state mean that, unlike other non-profit groups, a church is not required to file the annual form 990-a yearly accounting of its cash income and outlay. Nevertheless, a church is required to keep books and records and be able to demonstrate to IRS auditors that all income has been properly outlaid.

The burden of proof lies on the church audited. When Westboro Baptist was incorporated in May of 1967, ominously close to the start of the candy crusade, the church was to be used for religious purposes only- including weekly public services, public prayers, singing of gospel songs and hymns, receiving of tithes and offerings, and observance of baptism and communion. 'Receiving of tithes and offerings' might well have meant legal fees in the pastor's mind. For 11 years, his law offices were located in the building on which he paid no taxes because it was a church. So, too, was his domicile: In 1960, the Eastside Baptist Church, holder of the original lien on the property at Westboro, attempted to foreclose and evict Phelps. The cause, as discussed in Chapter Four, was his altering the function of the property from a public congregation to a private residence. Indeed, with only a few exceptions, since 1958, the 'congregation' at Westboro has been just the Phelps family. The benefits of calling one's own family a church?

First, one can go into fundraising for oneself instead of gainful employment. Each of us can at last be our own favorite charity. Second, banco to those pasty property taxes. Third, if one owns a business, they can operate it from within their church at a fraction of the honest overhead.

To an observer, it seems remarkable that someone who has paid no personal, property, or corporate taxes for a profitable operation-a.k.a. "religion"-would have the inaccuracy to lecture his community ad nauseam about its misuse of taxes. Mark Phelps estimates the summer lawn and hauling enterprise of 1970, 1971, and 1972 netted between eight to ten thousand a season. Since it was turned over to their father, no doubt it was declared by him as taxable personal income for those years. After the pastor was reinstated to the bar in 1971, the older children were required to put in long hours assisting at the law office. By 1975 and the end of the candy sales, they were coming out of law school, ready to take their place in the trenches against the Adamic race, and willing to underwrite their dad's fantasies with an estimated 10 to 25 percent tithe on their personal incomes. The final irony of all this? In the actual Children's Crusade of 1212, fervent Christian children from all over France were inspired to free Jerusalem from the Moslems. Over 20,000 youths, most of them between the ages of seven and twelve, marched across France to the port of Marseille, where they hoped the pope would provide them ships to the Holy Land. Unfortunately, the ship captains were mostly pirates. When the fleet sailed, it wasn't to Jerusalem, but to the slave ports of North Africa. A generation of child idealists were sold into chains and never heard from again. Of course, the pirates probably weren't ever heard from either. Certainly they never became moral commentators or social reformers. But, back then, pirates had more grace and self-knowledge. That is, if Gilbert and Sullivan can be trusted.