Jane Stork

Jane Stork, also known as Ma Shanti Bhadra and Catherine Jane Paul Elsea, is a former follower of Rajneesh. Best known for her involvement with the assassination attempt on Swami Devaraj and her role in the conspiracy to murder Charles Turner, she is now an ex-sannyasin who publicly speaks about the negative side of participating in Rajneeshee activities. She wrote the memoir Breaking the Spell: My Life as a Rajneeshee and the Long Journey Back to Freedom and is interviewed extensively in Wild Wild Country, a Netflix documentary series about the mass settlement of Rajneesh followers to Antelope in rural Oregon during the 1980s.

Career & Rajneesh involvement

Mother Nature health food store According to her memoir, in the mid-1970s, Stork and her then husband Roger Lalor were shown a for sale ad for Mother Nature, a health food store in Midland, Australia. They decided to buy it and reopened it for business less than a week after. While she started off doing uncompensated volunteer work cleaning toilets for the ashram, she eventually grew in rank to occupy a variety of positions within the commune. By the Rajneesh Movement's collapse in Oregon in 1985, Stork had risen to being part of the trusted inner circle of Ma Anand Sheela, A former colleague of Stork's described her as a nice person, but noted that she did not have much autonomy. In July 1981 the Rajneeshees bought Big Muddy Ranch in Wasco County Oregon to develop their intentional community, but faced pushback from local ranchers and the 1000 Friends of Oregon environmental group regarding land-use laws. The original objections from 1000 friends stated that while creation of urban development on agricultural land, such as Big Muddy Ranch, violated Oregon law, non-agricultural structures could be reasonably constructed in Antelope which is zoned as a city.

Official roles Between her time in the Pune ashram and as part of the cohort dedicated to establishing the Rajnesshpuram community, Stork slowly worked her way up through different custodial, cooking, teaching, and legal offices. A similar scenario seems to have occurred for her role as the vice president of the Rajneesh Medical Corporation. Stork was asked to move into Sheela's house in 1984 after waxing Sheela's legs, eventually growing closer with her and became part of her inner circle, many of whom resided in the section of Rajneeshpuram called “Jesus Grove."

Leaving Rajneeshpuram After multiple failed assassination attempts of other commune members and collapse of the Turner assassination plot, tensions within Sheela's group of elites came to a head. Stork—who had already begun harboring doubts regarding the moral justifications of the planned murders—declared her refusal to kill others after witnessing a fellow Rajneeshpuram leader descend into a mental breakdown about the group's turn towards violence.

Sentencing On July 22, 1986, Stork, under the name of Catherine Jane Paul Elsea, entered negotiated plea deals in the Multnomah County Circuit Court. Stork pled guilty to state charges that she had been involved in the poisoning of two Wasco County Commissioners and Swami Devaraj,

In September 2005, Stork voluntarily returned to Portland to face federal charges for her role in the abandoned murder plot of Charles Turner. In doing so, she was allowed to visit her son Peter in Australia, who was dying of cancer.

Stork was sentenced to time served for this offense because of the 3 months she spent in jail during the battle over her extradition in 1991, and 5 years of probation in Germany.

Book Stork published her book Breaking the Spell: My Life as a Rajneeshee and the Long Journey Back to Freedom in April 2009. It was an autobiography sharing her life story, primarily focusing on her time as part of the Rajneesh Movement.

Wild Wild Country In 2018, Stork participated in Wild Wild Country, a six-episode documentary series on Netflix about the Rajneesh Movement. The series centered in the creation of Rajneeshpuram and the Rajneesh movement's occupation of the Big Muddy Ranch. The series used photos, archived videos, and interviews. Many episodes featured Stork as a lead interviewee. Throughout the series, Stork talks about how she first encountered the movement and her initial impressions of the Bhagwan. She also mentions the ashram in India and what drew her to the Bhagwan originally. Stork also shared what the early days at the ranch in Oregon looked like, including the tension with the town of Antelope and her growing devotion to Sheela. The last three episodes focus on the criminal charges against members of Rajneeshpuram. Stork shares how she was involved with acquiring firearms, planning, and attempting to both assassinate Charles Turner and Swami Devaraj. Lastly, she shares her perspective surrounding her eventual arrest and return to Portland in 1986, along with her later return in 2005.

Personal life

Family Born in Perth Australia, Jane was the fourth born sibling of five children. Her three older sisters are Rosemary, Susan, and Mary Lou, and her younger brother is named John. Stork met her first husband, geologist Roger Lalor, during her time in at the University of Western Australia. The couple married in 1966. They had two children together, Kylie and Peter Lalor.

Marriages Stork and Roger Lalor lived in Australia for a majority of their early marriage. However, as noted across her memoir and interviews, throughout their marriage, Stork felt growing resentment and anger towards Roger. Seeking marriage mediation, Stork and Roger Lalor began seeing a psychologist, who was a Rajneeshee and first introduced them to the Rajneesh Movement. While living at the ashram in India, Stork was sterilized. In 1983, Stork and Roger divorced so both of them could marry American sanyassins to attain American citizenship and be eligible to join the Rajneeshpuram community. After divorcing her second husband, Stork later met and married Hans-George Stork during her time in Germany.