Evil Harvest: The True Story of Cult Murder in the American Heartland

This book sent chills through me as I read, but it is perhaps because all of this took place within 10-30 miles of my home and I know some of the people involved. No truer title could have been picked for this book.

This is a very well researched account of how one man's dissatisfaction with his life and the influence of the Posse Comitatus resulted in the deaths by torture of a five year old child and a gentle, easily influenced man. The way that Mike Ryan was able to use those disenfranchised by the farm crisis to join him in his paranoid fantasy and live according to his rules is a study in abnormal psychology. As someone who came in contact with this group who lived by stealing from isolated farmsteads while purportedly carrying out God's will, I still find it a frightening story of how many ways religion can be twisted into evil deeds.I lost my copy of this book because a friend from California couldn't put it down before he had to leave!