Krishna Venta (1911-1958)

Religious name adopted by Francis Heindswater Pencovic, founder of the now-defunct WFLK (Wisdom, Faith, Love, and Knowledge) Fountain of the World, a Hindu-based religious community. Pencovic grew up in Utah as a Mormon and was orphaned when he was eight. Venta who claimed to be Christ, was said to have come from the planet Neophrates many years ago and landed in Nepal. He was teleported to the United States on March 9, 1932, and took over the biography of a three-year-old boy, Francis Pencovic, who had recently died. He gathered a following that settled in the Box Canyon area of the San Fernando Valley in the 1940s.

During the 1950s Krishna Venta was accused of unfaithfulness to his wife with various women of the group. On December 10, 1958, several former members whose wives were still in the group encountered Krishna Venta in the administrative building of the group's communal settlement and set off a dynamite bomb that killed ten people, including Venta. His wife succeeded him as leader of the group, which continued into the early 1980s.

Pencovic, Francis Heindswater (1911-1958)

Founder of the WFLK Foundation of the World, a communal religious group with roots in Hinduism. Pencovic operated under his religious name, Krishna Venta. Raised a Mormon, Pencovic became a public figure in his new identity in the 1930s and founded the group he led in the 1940s. He was killed by some dissident members in 1958 and the group finally disbanded in the early 1980s.

Sources:

Mathison, Richard. Faiths, Cults, and Sects of America. Indianapolis: Bibbs-Merrill, 1960.

Ormont, Arthur. Love Cults & Faith Healers. New York: Ballantine Books, 1961.