EX-DEVOTEES WANT TO KNOW: WHERE DID THE MONEY GO?

One of Ruth Jones' last deeds as a conservative activist in Oregon was to crash a high school gay-rights assembly.

She passed for a senior co-ed, clad in a leather jacket and with blond hair to her waist. But standing incognito toward the back of the auditorium, her anger burned hotter with every act on the stage.Finally, she could take it no more and pushed her way into an outside hallway to vent her rage.

"I mean my tantrum stopped everybody in their tracks. I told the teachers and any adult there that they had no right to make students watch this play. I was almost spitting I was so mad," recalls Jones, who asked that her real name not be used.

Her vigor for conservative ideals later would turn Jones and her husband to less-public but far more costly displays, moving them to seek refuge from "the liberal, corrupt" government in Oregon's Statehouse.

Their search, shared by dozens of families and individuals with the same passion, ended 19 miles south of this rural town at a place called Mammoth Valley.

It was to have been a prototype community with 200 building lots; followers would forsake the world, adhering to the "freedom principles" in the U.S. Constitution.

Its organizer, Bill Doughty, was accepting "donations" of between $2,000 and $14,000 in exchange for promises of deeds to lots. Each parcel was priced from $2,000 to $5,000, but Doughty encouraged would-be residents to pay a $10,000 "infrastructure" fee to further guarantee a spot in line.

In four years, the former minister had persuaded at least 72 families or individuals to pay for unsecured land rights in the high desert area dotted by cedar trees and sagebrush.

Four families had left their jobs and homes during summer 1992 to live on the land in tents and trailers. The others with money in the project waited with growing impatience for the day they could build in Mammoth.

Meanwhile, Doughty feverishly worked another fund-raising angle.

With an empty gas tank and countless unpaid bills on his mind, the constitutionalist stopped in July 1993 at the home of Arizona resident Elna Garrison, a retiree whose generosity had bailed him out before.

This time, he needed $20 to take him back to Utah after a trip to California. Though he owed her $80,000, Garrison was only too happy to oblige him the gas money.