Jonathan Hirsch
speaker
674 appearances
7 recordings
3 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 13 Apr
Jonathan Hirsch’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Mar 2026 with 2.
Appearances
From Sony Music Entertainment, this is Scary Terry. I'm Jonathan Hirsch. Chapter One, The Mysterious Death of Devereux Cleaver. Chuck and Gail were the perfect match. An all-American couple. Chuck was tall and muscular with a gentle smile and wavy brown hair. Played college basketball, worked in commercial real estate. Gail had fine blonde hair, high cheekbones, a model.
She in fact was one in those days for a chain of department stores in Texas. But the couple also came together with history. Kids from another marriage, previous relationships. The biggest challenge in their young life together was no doubt sharing Devereux with Sandra. Because it always felt to them like they weren't just sharing Devereux with Sandra.
They were sharing her with Terry, Terry Hoffman.
Terry was a kind of spiritual life coach. She'd recently started a group she was calling Conscious Development of Body, Mind, and Soul. We'll call them CDBMS for short. Under this name, she hosted group meditation sessions where she would also give lectures to a growing number of people in Dallas about things like reincarnation, the soul, and the hidden energies that inform and power our world.
She'd host these events around North Dallas, often on the campus of Southern Methodist University. And Sandra was one of Terry's first disciples and a close friend. Sandra had had a tough few years and was searching for meaning in her life.
And with those consecutive losses, a window opened up in her heart. She'd do anything for relief. Take any advice that seemed to get her to a better place. Terry was a heavyset woman in her 40s, round frame, lumbering, big piercing brown eyes, and tough black hair often pulled back into a bun.
She didn't on the surface appear to be particularly charismatic, but it was her words that captivated people. Oh, Terry.
There are few recordings left of Terry. but this is from one of these counseling sessions she gave to her students. Her voice is slight, with a thick Texas lilt. She was gentle and nurturing to her students. A divine mother, one former disciple told me. Life, Terry instructed her earliest acolytes, was a journey towards spiritual evolution.
And she was there to help you advance, to cheer you along as you became more spiritually aware, but also to encourage you to eliminate things that weren't serving you.
This all sounded too kooky for Chuck. He stayed out of it. His wife was slipping. He didn't approve of this new relationship, which was taking time away from raising the family and also costing them. She was buying up expensive jewelry from Terry made of semi-precious stones she claimed would provide spiritual protection.
When Sandra started writing checks for several thousand dollars made out to Terry's group, Chuck had enough. They were at an impasse. That's when he met Gail. Both of them had been invited to a minister's home.
It was the first time Gail met Sandra.
Different, like she marches to the beat of her own drum. Eccentric.
It took the women a minute to realize she was being serious.
And I'm sure it felt unsettling to the other women in that room, these relatively well-to-do Christian women chatting in the kitchen of a Dallas suburb, 1972.
Not long after, Sandra asked Chuck for a divorce.
Who was this woman? She'd wrestled her way into the center of a marriage and managed to convince Sandra that, to evolve, her husband had to go. She had spiritual practices to pursue or whatever, and Chuck was getting in the way. At the same time, Chuck had started this new blended family. Gail was Devereaux's stepmom, and Devereaux now had a stepbrother and stepsisters close in age.
He was concerned about Terry's influence on his daughter. He fought to have full custody of Devereaux.
Chuck's lawyer was scared. Sandra had espoused some pretty out there ideas, which she seemed to be absorbing from her friend Terry.
Chuck's attorney feared that Sandra was being influenced, that she might do something she'd later deeply regret. If you move forward and get full custody, his lawyer said, which it looks like you can get, you will win the battle, but you're gonna lose the war.
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