Jonathan Hirsch
speaker
1,168 appearances
9 recordings
3 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 5 Jun
Jonathan Hirsch’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Mar 2026 with 2.
Appearances
Cecil was sympathetic to the family's concerns, but he was hamstrung as far as prosecution goes. Because while it seemed as clear as day to Gail and Chuck and Kroom that Terry Hoffman had played a role in these three deaths, there was no smoking gun. There was motive, for sure. For days, there was motive. But there was no note from Terry promising Sandra that she would be reborn after death.
There was no recording of Terry saying that Devereaux needed to go. Dev died in what came to be seen as a tragic accident. Violent seas swept her away. The motive to have access to her money was clear, but the actions tying Terri to her death were flimsy at best, non-existent at worst. Something I've been thinking about time and again in this case.
You can't have a smoking gun when you die by your own hand. And so there was little the DA could do. The trial to decide what would happen with Sandra's will began in 1982.
You know, we proceeded to move on with our life. They moved on and left Sandra's sordid history behind them. just as the Cleavers had tried to after Devereaux. And in each tragedy, the money flowed to Terry. A reporter covering the Terry Hoffman story in the 80s said to me, there was a lot of smoke. The challenge was always determining whether it was all coming from the same fire.
Terry was described as having a soft and gentle demeanor. But could that unassuming woman be a mastermind? In the beginning, it was hard to imagine she could have anything to do with these tragedies that surrounded her. This poor orphan from far west Texas, who'd been introduced to mystical ideas from a Lutheran nun at an orphanage.
It was time to dig deeper into Terry's history and into her group. Past is prologue, as they say. A prologue to a story darker and more terrifying than I could have possibly imagined. When I went in search of who Terry was before Devereaux's death, before Sandra drove herself and Luis off a cliff, I knew I had to talk to someone from those early days. That's when I met Janine Snyder.
By the time Janine crossed paths with Terry, she was in her 20s and had a small child she was raising on her own. She'd just moved to Dallas. For as long as she could remember, Janine knew she could see things others could not.
As a newcomer to the city, Janine was struggling. She knew she was different, sometimes made her question her sanity. And that's when a friend told her about Terry's meditation group. The classes were held at the Church of Religious Science.
Terry was heavyset with a wide gait. She wore loose-fitting clothes, drapey gowns or muumus. Her whole face would draw towards her brow when she frowned or looked serious and snap back into an overly tight expression when she smiled. She was not striking or welcoming, really, but I guess that, in a way, made her feel authentically motherly to some.
I'm beginning to see what made this woman appealing. In a deeply conservative town, here was this raggedy prophet who gazed lovingly on you, who promised a brave and spiritually-minded path and a circle of friends to do it with. Janine met Sandra there, too, perhaps the person most close to Terry in those days.
Janine told me she didn't feel crazy anymore. She had a deep longing to be okay. Terry had this way of meeting students where they were and helping them to see their life in a new way. One that made them feel understood even when they were in crisis.
Janine got close enough to Terry to realize she could be different things to different people.
For those under her spell, she was almost godlike, a guru of sorts. Terry G. It was baffling to people on the outside. In photos, she appears nervous and unhealthy. Janine said there was an excuse for that. The fat, the excess weight she carried, was there to carry all the energy. It was necessary. The energy she apparently absorbed from her followers.
This was also why Terry wore semi-precious and precious stones. Stones that she sold to her followers. They were spiritual protection and apparently absorbed bad energies too.
By then, Terry had asked Janine to join a circle of teachers, an exclusive group within CDBMS, tasked with being sort of ministers of Terry's message.
$25,000 is a lot of jewelry today. Honey.
So in addition to the lectures, Terri sold this jewelry, which was supposed to give you spiritual protection. She made these recordings of her lectures and did private, paid consultations. She was carving out a nice little New Age niche for herself. Terri told followers like Janine that she was a living master from humble beginnings, who'd picked cotton in the West Texas sun.
The orphan who saw the light through the wisdom of a Lutheran nun. The nine-year-old who was adopted by a Dallas family who'd lost their child to tuberculosis. The Benson family.
Her first husband, he was a trucker. She married him at age 15 in Oklahoma, where that was still legal. That part was true, or at least the public records support it, but the rest of it, highly unlikely. I pulled the vital statistics from Pecos County, where Fort Stockton is located. She was born to the Bensons, a musician and a housewife from Dallas.
Terry Lee Benson was not who she said she was. By the mid-70s, Terry's influence in the Dallas area was growing. The people who came to her lectures, who paid for her consultations, they were from all walks of life. Students, professionals, you name it. Some accounts had as many as 300 people attending lectures of Terry's at Southern Methodist University.
Showing 1121–1140 of 1,168 · page 57 of 59
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