The Binge Cases: Baby Broker
Scary Terri | 1. The Mysterious Death of Devereaux Cleaver
Mon, 02 Dec 2024
In 1979, 14-year-old Devereaux Cleaver vanished at sea. Was it an accident? Or part of a sick and deadly conspiracy? After her death, something suspicious happens that points the finger at Terri Hoffman. Binge all episodes of Scary Terri, ad-free today by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge Cases show page on Apple Podcasts and hit ‘subscribe’ or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access. The Binge – feed your true crime obsession. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who was Devereaux Cleaver and what happened to her?
The Binge. Feed your true crime obsession. The Binge. When I started looking into a string of mysterious deaths in Dallas, Texas in the 1970s and 80s, I had no idea what kind of madness, carnage, and darkness I'd find there. I also didn't think I'd stumble across another Charlie Manson. Devereux Cleaver had just turned 14 when her mom, Sandra Cleaver, invited her to go on a vacation to Hawaii.
Her mom's fiance, Lynn Fairchild, would be there too. And her close friend and mentor, Terry. Devereaux's stepmother, Gail Cleaver, remembers her as a bright girl, sweet and shy, tall.
Long, beautiful, curly, blonde hair. Like Chuck used to say, she had legs all the way to Bakersfield.
She loved animals and basketball and her new step-siblings. Gail had a son and two daughters from a previous marriage. They were this Brady Bunch type family, a friend of hers told me. Devereux was excited to go, but Chuck and his new wife Gail were worried about the trip.
They really didn't care for the people Sandra hung around with, especially her friend Terry, to whom she was practically attached at the hip. But spending quality time with her mom was something Devereux didn't get to do very much, and Chuck and Gail didn't want to get in the way of that. The Wailupe in O'ahu. A windy peninsula southeast of Honolulu.
It means literally kite water on account of the breezy Pakata coastline where they could take flight and nearly touch the sky. You can see them today, guiding surfers across the water like disembodied souls under the bright sun. Hawaii was an exotic wonderland for Devereaux.
Far from the dusty horizon, the muscular cloud clusters miles high, and the hot blanket of air draping Dallas like a set piece in a movie.
Chuck and I had been out at a couple friend of ours that night, and we'd gotten home late, and we crawled into bed, but it was about 1.30 in the morning. And I answered the phone.
Hello?
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Chapter 2: What were the circumstances of Devereaux's disappearance?
She was impacting their lives big time.
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.
hit her terribly. She lost her father in an airplane crash, and she lost her 16-year-old sister, younger sister, in an automobile crash within a two-year period of time.
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.
Yeah, you know, the more I get to know about this is just thrilling to think of all this help and... It is nice. And you know what's so sad is that not more people in the world, you know, have any access to it.
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.
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Chapter 3: How did the Cleaver family react to Devereaux's disappearance?
It took the women a minute to realize she was being serious.
Yeah. Whereas Jesus, of course, changed water into wine as his first miracle on earth. She said because of her power, she could turn the wine back into water, to which, of course, the minister's wife said, please don't.
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.
I didn't know their marriage was going to heck at that time, but I soon found out later from one of the other ministers that their marriage was not looking good.
Not long after, Sandra asked Chuck for a divorce.
Then the reason for their divorce... was because Terry Hoffman had told Sandra that Chuck was impeding Sandra's spiritual growth.
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.
He was about to get custody, and not only his attorney, but Sandra's attorney came to him and said to him, You are about to get custody of your daughter.
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Chapter 4: Who is Terry Hoffman and what influence did she have?
Kristen figured it'd be your typical teenage sleepover. Junk food, manicures, movie marathons. It was anything but.
So we went over to spend the night. I will never forget this. And we were in Devereux's room.
The house on Manning Lane in Dallas was just a five-minute walk from Terry's. A big front yard with a paved walkway towards the door. Large, sleepy oak trees hung over the walkway on either side. And inside the house, in the living room, all the people from CDBMS were there. From Dev's room in the back of the house, the girls could hear all of their voices.
They were a little creeped out by the whole thing, but also curious.
Devereaux at one point said, you know, let's go see what they're doing.
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Chapter 5: What conspiracy theories surround Devereaux's death?
They agreed to go check it out.
We literally crawled on the hallway floor. and opened a door to peek through, and they were all sitting in a circle.
Men and women from all walks of life were gathered around to listen to Terri. Preppy academics, long-haired hippies, young, wide-eyed seekers, and seasoned spiritualists.
And we couldn't see exactly, but we heard some discussion about how somebody's blood was evil.
Wait, what?
And that was enough for me. I scurried on back to Devereux's room with my sister, and we were so freaked out.
Chrissy never forgot what she heard that night. It was over 40 years ago, and it's seared into her memory. How can someone's blood be evil? Why were these adults acting like that was a perfectly normal thing to be talking about? Chrissy could tell immediately something wasn't kosher about the whole thing.
And we never, ever went back again.
Never went back to the house Dev shared with her mom, Sandra. For a sweet kid, Dev had to deal with some pretty heavy stuff. At her dad's, she had the stability of a big family, a two-parent household, but she still very much loved her mom.
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Chapter 6: What impact did Terry Hoffman have on Sandra Cleaver?
And it was just very unusual for her to show up at my front door unannounced or without her father picking her up.
It was the last time Gail ever saw that young girl. The one she raised and loved was her own.
I have remembered that often. She knew she was going to Hawaii soon and she wanted to say goodbye.
That night, Dev showed up unannounced to the house. She boarded a plane with her mother, Sandra Cleaver, and Terry Hoffman to Hawaii. They'd be there for a week.
They had gone for a picnic.
February 25th, 1979. The picnic by the beach at Wailupe Peninsula. It was clearly not a safe place to be swimming.
And they went to the windward side of the island. And as it turns out, there were posters all over that beach marked, do not enter the water, no swimming.
It's the kind of detail Gail has played over and over again in her mind. Why would Sandra choose to take Devereux swimming there unless she knew it was dangerous and did it anyway?
But Devereux and Sandra went out holding hands, singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, which was Devereux's favorite song from Wizard of Oz.
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Chapter 7: What were the legal battles over custody related to Devereaux?
A growing suspicion. A tangled mess of grief, fear, and rage.
He brought her back home to Dallas. And I guess it was on the same airplane as Sandra and Terry.
His daughter's body in the cargo of the plane and a nine-hour flight to think about what had happened to her. Chuck knew he didn't have all the information yet, but something wasn't right. He'd questioned why the trip was happening in the first place. And now this, why did they choose to swim out there? And why had Sandra acted so strange when Terry came into the hospital room?
Dev's body was transferred to the medical examiner in Dallas. The tox screen came up negative. An autopsy showed no sign of struggle. Nothing strange. If someone had had a hand in Devereaux's death, it wasn't physical. She was then transported to a funeral home. Chuck wanted the girls to have closure, so he brought them all there to view Dev's body before she was cremated.
Gail remembers seeing her face like it was yesterday. There was still seaweed in her hair. But something altogether strange had happened while Chuck and Jean were in flight back to Honolulu. Gail got a call to the house. It was one of Terry Hoffman's children. They said they had a document they needed to show the family. A will. Devereaux's will.
A will that she had written that Chuck didn't know anything about. A couple of days after they'd been informed of the will, an unidentified woman entered a Dallas bank where Devereux had an account and handed the teller the document. The woman was looking to make a withdrawal from the account because, according to the will, this dead girl had given all of her money away to Terry Hoffman.
Now Chuck and Gail knew there was no doubt in their minds what had happened to their daughter. And there was nothing they could do about it. Why do you think it was so difficult to tie Terry to these deaths?
Because there's no smoking gun.
This season on Scary Terry.
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