Scary Terri | 5. The White Pill
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What warning does the episode give about sensitive topics?
Listen to all episodes of Scary Terry ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page or visit getthebinge.com to access wherever you listen. The Binge, feed your true crime obsession. The Binge. Before we get started, I just want to let you know that we do discuss suicide in this episode.
What tragic events surround Terry Hoffman's circle?
So please listen with care. People talk about the Texas sky. It's big, grand, but there's more to it than that. There's a sense of perspective, awe even, that holds its lovers captive. And under that wide canvas, the human drama plays out, small and terrifying below. By the late 1980s, the drama that surrounded Terry Hoffman's small circle was beginning to bleed out from its protective covering.
Hi, my name is Pete Slover and I'm an attorney in Austin, Texas. At the time that the Hoffman case was unfolding, I was a reporter for the Dallas Morning News.
Who is Pete Slover and what role did he play?
Pete was a cub reporter in the 80s when he joined the paper. And for one of his first big stories, he started looking into Terry and her group. By then, Devereux Cleaver had drowned. Glenn Cooley overdosed. Sandra and Louise had driven off a cliff. Don Hoffman had taken his life in a hotel on account of cancer he didn't have.
I didn't see anything that was obvious that would explain their deaths, but what I did see was Terry Hoffman's name recurring in multiple places.
How did Terry manipulate her followers?
How could one person seemingly have been in the right place at the right time to benefit from so many deaths, so many suicides?
It's easy to kind of roll up these series of events into one kind of crazy story. But at the same time, you have to think of each one of these victims as being deeply affected and arguably their lives ruined, their family members' lives ruined by these circumstances. So that's a huge thing.
So Pete went looking for answers.
I talked to her on the phone.
Terry Hoffman. He called her up. At that point, she would have been in her early 50s.
She was very soft-spoken, very quiet, and did not betray anything of what other people recounted as something of a pretty stiff temper.
Pete Slover was particularly interested in what happened to one couple, the Goodmans, and their involvement with Terry, because he actually knew David.
I was a student of David Goodman, who was a professor at Southern Methodist University. He had this kind of big, blocky, bowl haircut that seemed a little bit dated even in the 80s when I knew him. Kind of a Sir Lancelot look going on. And he was kind of funny and light and very, very intellectual.
His specialty was something new at the time, how to integrate computers into workplaces. He had gotten a PhD at Yale and eventually found himself in Dallas as a professor at SMU. His son, Tony, summed him up this way.
In a way, fairly conservative, but still, I think, a hippie at heart, free spirit.
Professionally, David had figured things out. He had a great job, had written a best-selling book on economics, but the equation of love was a different matter for him. All that changed when he met Glenda at a conscious development meeting. Terry introduced them and, later, would officiate their wedding. David and Glenda had both led full lives before they met. Glenda had three kids from a prior marriage. David had Tony and his brother Rick. When they met, David's kids had headed off to college.
And so they were two empty masters. I think they really wanted to believe they were on a spiritual journey, making the world a better place, making the universe a better place.
Terry began to occupy the space left behind by their kids. Together, they shared a quest for the meaning of life, and most importantly, what happens after life, the beyond. It's a journey that led them all the way to the edge of an abyss. By then, they were so desperate and afraid and listening to one voice, one woman who promised them death was not an end.
What led to the deaths of David and Glenda Goodman?
I teach that an individual does not only have one life to live, but many.
Secure death doesn't work.
No, I don't.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What warning does the episode give about sensitive topics?
0:02–0:36
2
What tragic events surround Terry Hoffman's circle?
0:36–1:35
3
Who is Pete Slover and what role did he play?
1:35–2:09
4
How did Terry manipulate her followers?
2:09–5:22
5
What led to the deaths of David and Glenda Goodman?
5:22–11:00
6
What were the circumstances of the Goodmans' discovery?
11:00–16:35
7
What financial ties did the Goodmans have with Terry?
16:35–24:10
8
What evidence suggests drug manipulation in the Goodmans' relationship with Terry?
24:10–32:18