Kenneth Wayne Thompson: He Slayed in the Name of Scientology
In the early afternoon of March 16, 2012, a woman in Prescott Valley, Arizona, noticed a plume of smoke rising from a neighbor’s house. She called her son, who knew the residents of that house — Penelope Edwards, aged 35, and her 38-year-old fiance, Troy Dunn, along with Edwards’ two children. Their neighbor’s son said he hadn’t heard from anyone in the family that day, which he said was troubling. So the neighbor called the fire department.
Once they had gotten the fire under control, what they found inside was shocking. The bodies of Edwards and Dunn laid among the ashes, bludgeoned, hacked, and partially corroded by acid.
Meanwhile, an Arizona state trooper was on the lookout for speeders on I-40 near Flagstaff, about 90 miles east of Prescott Valley. At about 4 p.m., a white Ford Taurus with Missouri plates caught his eye, but not because it was speeding. The driver was, as he later wrote in his report, “staring straight ahead with both arms locked out and gripping the steering wheel.” The trooper followed the vehicle from a distance before pulling it over.
That’s when things went from strange to suspicious. The trooper could see a red gas can inside the car, and he smelled solvent. The driver appeared extremely nervous, visibly shaking.
Out of nowhere, the driver recounted a tale that he had just come from a zoo, where he had fed some animals raw meat. Blood from the meat had gotten on his clothes, he said, so he’d had to change.
The trooper searched the car. Inside, he found the bloody pants the driver had referred to — along with a handgun and a hatchet caked with human blood and hair. The trooper arrested the man, then called dispatch to ask if there had been any murders reported. They told him of the double homicide and house fire in Prescott Valley.
While handcuffed, the driver asked if Arizona allowed conjugal visits in prison.
The driver’s name was Kenneth Wayne Thompson.
At his trial, Thompson would claim that his actions were a spur-of-the-moment decision to “save” his nephew from the “evils” of psychiatry — a fear based on his belief in Scientology.
Thompson, who had been raised Baptist, was first introduced to Scientology by his mother’s third husband. While I won’t go into all of Scientology’s beliefs here, the important thing in this story is that they have a deep-seated opposition to psychiatry. They consider it a sham and evil, and that participating in it damages your eternal soul. Thompson’s defense was that it was just these Scientologist beliefs that motivated him to commit these murders. During his trial, the beliefs and practices of Scientologists were the subject of much testimony and questioning — and headlines.
Yet it doesn’t seem that Thompson was all that devout of a Scientologist. His ex-wife testified at trial that he had stopped being a practicing Scientologist, at least partially because of the cost. Other testimony suggested that Thompson was a so-called “free zone” Scientologist, a sect that adheres to what it says are the original teachings of the church’s founder, science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, and does not follow the church’s current leader, David Miscavige.
Scientologists, of course, completely disavow Thompson’s behavior. Karin Pouw, a Church of Scientology spokesperson, stated, “There is no connection between Scientology beliefs and practices and any act taken by Kenneth Thompson at issue in the case. Nothing he did could be more opposed to our moral code.”
What’s even more mysterious is the fact that he wasn’t even that close to the children he sought to “rescue.” His relationship to them was distant — they were the niece and nephew of his wife, Gloria. The children’s mother, Penelope Edwards, had struggled with addiction and troubles with the law. While she was in jail, her kids had stayed with her sister, Gloria. Thompson had only known them the last two months of their stay, before they went back to live with their mother. The boy, likely because of all the upheaval he experienced when he was younger, had some mental-health issues. He was being treated for them with both therapy and, possibly, medication. It was for this that Thompson believed the boy’s soul was in danger, that he needed to be saved.
So on March 14, 2012, he told Gloria and their two kids that he was going on a short trip from their Doniphan, Missouri, home to Memphis to deal with his recently deceased parents’ estate. He had previously bought a handgun and a “burner” cell phone, which he took with him, leaving his usual cell phone behind. He also withdrew $10,000 from their bank account.
He then drove 1,400 miles in 25 hours to Prescott Valley, Arizona. There, he checked into a motel and rested. The next day, he went to Walmart, where he purchased a hatchet and a change of clothes.
That afternoon, he took a taxi to Edwards’ and Dunn’s home, where they let him inside. Thankfully, neither of Edwards’ two children were home at the time. Her daughter was spending spring break with a friend; her son was at Phoenix Children’s Hospital being treated for his behavioral issues.
We may never know exactly what happened next, but we do know that Edwards made a phone call after Thompson arrived, and that he had brought food for them. Toxicology test would show the victims had drugs in their systems, though it’s not known when or how they ingested them.
According to investigators, Thompson beat the couple to death and chopped them with the hatchet. Edwards had 22 wounds to the head and neck, including “signs of chopping,” according to the Arizona Republic, and a severed jugular vein. Dunn also suffered multiple head wounds from a sharp instrument.
Thompson then doused the bodies in acid and set fire to the house using flares and diesel fuel.
It was while he was on his way home that he was stopped by the Arizona state trooper.
After his arrest, Thompson would first claim that he had only gone to Edwards’ and Dunn’s house to talk to them, to try and convince them to stop giving his nephew psychiatric treatments. But when he arrived, he said, he encountered two people “strung out on heroin,” and that Dunn was attacking Edwards with a hatchet. Thompson claimed he acted in self-defense, and only used the acid and fire to destroy DNA evidence.
But no one bought that story. In 2012, a grand jury indicted Thompson on 12 charges, including burglary, wrongful possession of a deadly weapon, arson, and two counts of homicide. On Feb. 20, 2019, a jury convicted him on two counts of first-degree murder, and on April 3, 2019, Thompson was given the death penalty. He is on death row at the Arizona State Prison Complex — Eyman in Florence, Arizona.
