Authorities and neighbors will tell you they knew something odd was going on at the House of Judah encampment in rural Allegan County, but it wasn’t until a young boy’s battered body arrived at the local hospital in the back of a pickup that the brutal underbelly of the cult was exposed.John Yarbough, 12, died 30 years ago this summer.
Survivors and authorities alike say the nightmare of that place still haunts the living
What started out as a communal group of "black Israelites" living under the leadership of a self-proclaimed prophet devolved into a place of despair, where punishment for minor transgressions was meted out in the form of public beatings and disfiguring burns, survivors and investigators say.
It was a place where armed guards roamed the perimeter, and children were padlocked into a collection of trailers at night. -Read more here
