Centerton mayor resigns
Posted on Thursday, November 22, 2007
CENTERTON — Ken Williams resigned Wednesday as mayor of this fast-growing bedroom community, one day after acknowledging he’d been living under an assumed name for more than 20 years.
Williams, whose real name is Don LaRose, offered his resignation about 2 p.m. during a special meeting of the City Council.
“What I did back in 1980 I did to protect my family,” he told the council in a resignation letter he signed, “Sincerely and with thanks, Ken Williams / Don LaRose.” Williams worked for area news-talk radio station KURM for 17 years before he was elected mayor in 2000 when Centerton’s population was 2, 524. He took office in 2001. Centerton had grown to 6, 743 residents in 2006, according to U. S. Census Bureau estimates.
His true identity came to light after relatives who had been looking for him found a Web site he had created, www. donlarose. com. The site chronicles the life story of LaRose, including claims of brainwashing and kidnapping, with the Mafia, satanic cults and murder all woven into the plot.
His family members traced the ownership of the Web site to Ken Williams in Centerton and then contacted the Benton County Daily Record.
Williams told the Daily Record in two separate interviews early Tuesday that he was not born in Allentown, Pa., as Don LaRose. Later that night he called the newspaper and confirmed it was true.
“I came home from work a little early and told my wife our whole world is about to crash down because I am Don LaRose, and I am Ken Williams, sort of,” he said in an interview he initiated Tuesday night with Daily Record reporters.
At City Hall on Wednesday, Williams met with City Council members for about half an hour in a private session before delivering his brief resignation statement, standing up and leaving the council room.
Council members had no comment about the developments. When the meeting broke up, however, the former mayor answered questions from reporters, recounting bits of the bizarre saga he has detailed on his Web site.
Williams, who was wearing a striped shirt, brown slacks and a Bob Wills belt buckle, said he still has a five-year gap in his memory and that the whole story was far too lengthy to retell in the council chambers. But he said the bottom line was simple “What happened in 1980 — whether it was right or wrong what I did — I did it under threat for the safety of my family and for our own survival. None of us would probably be here today if I had not done that, and there would be some bodies in some graves.” For details, he pointed to his Web site. Though he noted that he wrote it in novelistic fashion and at one point altered the chronology, he said it’s a true account. Williams said he’d been updating it during the day Wednesday to “get some of the fluff out of it.” FORMER LIFE Don LaRose was born March 11, 1940, and was the 35-year-old pastor of First Baptist Church in Maine, N. Y., when he went missing in November 1975. Church members suggested the disappearance was an abduction by Satan worshippers. According to early news reports, LaRose claimed to have been teaching a course on Satan when he received threatening letters from Satanists who accused him of blasphemy.
LaRose was found about three months later. The investigating detectives concluded LaRose had caused his own disappearance, according to a Feb. 13, 1976, article in Christianity Today magazine.
Church members, who rallied and prayed for his return, dropped the search. The church board terminated its relationship with LaRose.
A Christianity Today reader recognized LaRose in Minneapolis living as Bruce Kent Williams. Bruce Kent Williams is the name of a 19-year-old man who died in a car accident in Norwich, N. Y., in 1958.
LaRose, in his online account, claimed that he had been kidnapped, forced into the back of a van and brainwashed with an electric machine attached to his forehead that made him forget his life as a minister and believe he was Bruce Kent Williams. He claimed he learned who he was only after treatment with Amytal Sodium, or amobarbital, a barbiturate that has a reputation as a truth serum.
In 1977, when he again was living as LaRose, he moved his wife and family to Hammond, Ind., where he became pastor of Hessville Baptist Church in 1978. LaRose appeared eager to share his story, speaking publicly about his alleged kidnapping experience and his life as Bruce Kent Williams.
But on June 10, 1980, LaRose disappeared after telling his wife, Eunice, that he was going next door to the church to visit someone, according to the missing persons report filed with the Hammond Police Department.
Church members suspected he’d been kidnapped by the same satanic cult he claimed had kidnapped him in 1975.
Lee Roy Floyd was a member of the Hammond Baptist Church deacon board for 45 years and knew LaRose. A reporter with the Times of Northwest Indiana newspaper interviewed Floyd on Tuesday night.
“The night before he disappeared, he was speaking to a group in the church, and in the middle of his sermon he stopped talking and looked at the back of the room,” Floyd said. “No one else who turned around saw anything, but LaRose later claimed he had seen one of the Satanists through a window outside.
“ And the next day he left. He was gone,” Floyd said.
Williams told the Daily Record on Tuesday night that he loaded up a backpack and headed to Wyoming, abandoning his wife and two daughters. Seven years later, she had him declared dead, according to Ed Miller, LaRose’s nephew.
Family members looking for LaRose made little headway until February, when they spotted the Web site, www. donlarose. com.
The Web site explained that LaRose moved to Israel in 1996. That same year, Ken Williams headed to Israel for a 10-day trip that changed his life, according to the Ken Williams Ministries Web site, kenwil-
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