<P> The Rajneeshpuram residents believed that the wider Oregonian community was both bigoted and suffered from religious intolerance . According to Latkin (1992) Rajneesh's followers had made peaceful overtures to the local community when they first arrived in Oregon . As Rajneeshpuram grew in size heightened tension led certain fundamentalist Christian church leaders to denounce Rajneesh, the commune, and his followers . Petitions were circulated aimed at ridding the state of the perceived menace . Letters to state newspapers reviled the Rajneeshees, one of them likening Rajneeshpuram to another Sodom and Gomorrah, another referring to them as a "cancer in our midst ." In time, circulars mixing "hunting humor" with dehumanizing characterizations of Rajneeshees began to appear at gun clubs, turkey shoots and other gatherings; one of these, circulated widely over the Northwest, declared "an open season on the central eastern Rajneesh, known locally as the Red Rats or Red Vermin ." </P> <P> As Rajneesh himself did not speak in public during this period, and until October 1984 gave few interviews, his secretary and chief spokesperson Ma Anand Sheela (Sheela Silverman) became, for practical purposes, the leader of the commune . She did little to defuse the conflict, employing a crude, caustic and defensive speaking style that exacerbated hostilities and attracted media attention . On September 14, 1985, Sheela and 15 to 20 other top officials abruptly left Rajneeshpuram . The following week, Rajneesh convened press conferences and publicly accused Sheela and her team of having committed crimes within and outside the commune . The subsequent criminal investigation, the largest in Oregon history, confirmed that a secretive group had, unbeknownst to both government officials and nearly all Rajneeshpuram residents, engaged in a variety of criminal activities, including the attempted murder of Rajneesh's physician, wiretapping and bugging within the commune and within Rajneesh's home, poisonings of two public officials, and arson . </P> <P> Sheela was extradited from West Germany and imprisoned for attempted murder, assault, wiretapping, and arson, immigration fraud, and her role in infecting the salad bars of several restaurants in The Dalles (the county seat of Wasco County) with salmonella, infecting 751 people (including several Wasco County public officials), and resulting in the hospitalization of 45 people . Known as the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack, the incident is regarded as the largest biological warfare attack in the history of the United States . These criminal activities had, according to the Office of the Attorney General, begun in the spring of 1984, three years after the establishment of the commune . Rajneesh himself was accused of immigration violations, to which he entered an Alford plea . As part of his plea bargain, he agreed to leave the United States and eventually returned to Poona, India . His followers left Oregon shortly afterwards . </P> <P> The legal standing of Rajneeshpuram remained ambiguous . In the church / state suit, Federal Judge Helen J. Frye ruled against Rajneeshpuram in late 1985, a decision that was not contested, since it came too late to be of practical significance . The Oregon courts, however, eventually found in favor of the city, with the Court of Appeals determining in 1986 that incorporation had not violated the state planning system's agricultural land goals . The Oregon Supreme Court ended litigation in 1987, leaving Rajneeshpuram empty and bankrupt, but legal within Oregon law . </P>

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