Gee lookie here!!
John Wayne Todd (May 19, 1949
[1][2] – November 10, 2007),
[3] also known as "John Todd Collins", "Lance Collins",
[4] "Kris Sarayn Kollyns", and "Christopher Kollyns",
[5] was an American speaker and
conspiracy theorist. He claimed to be a former
occultist who was born into a '
witchcraft family' before converting to
Christianity. He was a primary source for many
Chick Publications works against
Dungeons & Dragons,
Catholicism,
Neopaganism, and
Christian rock. Although most of his activity was during the 1970s, his claims continue to be spread in many
fundamentalist Christian circles.
Todd was arrested in May 1987 for the
rape of a
University of South Carolina graduate student. After his arrest, he was additionally charged with
sexually molesting two children who attended a karate school where he worked. He was convicted of the rape in January 1988 and sentenced to 30 years in state prison.
[16] In 2004, Todd was released, but he was put in the care of the Behavioral Disorder Treatment Unit run by the South Carolina Department of Mental Health.
[17] On November 10, 2007, Todd died in the institute.
[3]
Inconsistencies in Todd's testimony
Todd claimed to have served as a Green Beret in the
Vietnam War, but his discharge papers list him as a general clerk/typist and do not record him having been in Vietnam. Army medical reports referred to "emotional instability with
pseudologica phantastica" (compulsive lying), difficulty in telling reality from fantasy, homicidal threats he had made on another, false suicide reports, and a severe personality disturbance.
[18] Todd also claimed in his testimony to have murdered an officer in Germany and to have escaped prison with the help of the Illuminati, but his records show no such things occurred.
[18]
Todd's speaking engagements during 1978 and 1979 generated controversy and sometimes hysteria at the churches he spoke at. Frequently, there were claims by Todd of gunshots in the parking lot or attacks on his life after the services, but there were no witnesses to confirm his claims.
While Todd claimed to have left witchcraft in 1972 and converted to fundamentalist Christianity, accounts have him being baptized into a Oneness Pentecostal church in
Phoenix, Arizona in 1968, and leading a Wiccan group in Ohio in 1976. When confronted with the latter by Christian evangelists, Todd said that he had gone through a period of "backsliding" during that time. However, when a number of other inconsistencies in Todd's story were reported in the evangelical Christian media, and Todd began denouncing many Christian leaders as part of the Satanic conspiracy or the Illuminati, many evangelists denounced Todd and cut off any further association. Jack Chick was the only influential evangelist to continue to defend Todd.
[19]
Several evangelical Christian ministries investigated Todd's claims and published articles disputing them. These included
Cornerstone magazine, the
Christian Research Institute,
Christianity Today magazine, and the book
The Todd Phenomenon by Darryl E. Hicks (with an introduction by Mike Warnke).
