Aug 1, 2008 10:11 pm US/Central
Pastor: Lane Bryant Murders Not Linked To Church
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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Pastor George Aja, Jr. of Embassy Christian Center does not believe that the Lane Bryant homicides could have resulted from any church disagreement.
CBS
Investigators probing the gruesome Lane Bryant mass murder are now focusing on victim Rhoda McFarland and a dispute within her former church.
Spicewood, Texas is the tiny town north of Austin where investigators ended up. And where CBS 2 sent a crew to find McFarland's former pastor who was among those being questioned.
CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports that the pastor of Embassy Christian Center headed the church that once had a thousand members, but collapsed amidst questions about its finances.
In an exclusive interview, George Aja denied problems within his ministry had anything to do with murder of McFarland or the other Lane Bryant victims.
"My family and I devastated and hurt to somehow be implicated in death of somebody we loved for years," Aja said.
"I believe unfortunately Rhoda McFarland was in the wrong place at the wrong time," said he said. "I don't believe that any church squabble could have led to anything like this."
Aja said he'd tried to patch things up with McFarland.
"That's when I invited her to come back to the church so we could pray for her and bless her so if she was going to leave the church it would be with a blessing, not out the back door," Aja said.
But he had been asked to not attend McFarland's funeral, reportedly because of differences between them. McFarland's brother told CBS 2 those differences led to her split with Aja.
"Rhoda left the church because of problems inside, some kind of financial thing," Maurice Hamilton, McFarland's brother, said.
"One day she called me and asked me to move her stuff out of the church," Hamilton said.
McFarland's funeral was held in the same building Aja's church once occupied. It had been sold to another Denver-based church group.
So far, authorities have found no connection between the split and the murders, but considered the lead important enough to send more than a dozen investigators to Texas.
"I wouldn't say its any more or less serious than the others," said Tinley Park Police Dept. Cmdr. Rick Bruno. "I'd say it's a routine situation where we would be talking to these people if they were in this area, it just so happens they were in Texas and we had to go there."
At the time, it was believed the killings were the result of a robbery gone bad. With McFarland's cell phone plea for help, enraging the gunman. But now investigators are looking at her former church and why she left it.
"Something was happening inside the church that she didn't approve of and she wanted to leave," Hamilton said.
"We've talked to detectives, offered to let them look at our books and they declined," Aja said.
Pastor Aja is just one of many members of McFarland's former church family who have been interviewed this week both in Texas where he now lives and here in the Chicago area. So far, the investigation is revealing major questions about church finances and the lifestyle of its leaders, but as yet, there is no murder suspect.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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