Fred Phelps: A lifetime of hatred

Fred Phelps loved to wear his white cowboy hat and flamboyant red and blue jacket.

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(DANSTHEMAN) -- Hundreds of citizens stand outside Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, the home of the infamous Westboro Cult, an extremist fringe group of the Baptist Movement famous for picketing funerals and special interest events. Usually, the protests are fraught with anger and rage, and laced with profanities, while counter-protestors attempt to spread messages of tolerance or exchange barbs with the cult members.

Today, there is only jubilation.

Fred Phelps, patriarch of the 60+ member Phelps family and founder/leader of Westboro, was pronounced dead late last evening at a nearby hospital. A preliminary coroner's report lists the cause of death as a "massive stroke" after lightning struck him. Rumors have abounded in the Topeka community for years that Phelps had suffered a mild "rage stroke" in the late 90s, brought on by one of the apoplectic rages that helped make him famous. The medical examiner refused to confirm or deny this rumor, and further refused to confirm or deny the rumor that Phelps had been suffering from liver cancer, brought about by his hard-living lifestyle in the 1960s and 1970s.

Word spread quickly amongst the Topeka community of Phelps's death, and within the hour an estimated forty people had gathered outside Westboro to host a candlelight vigil. When asked why the people had chosen a ritual usually associated with well-wishes and waiting out hard times, one of the men who helped pass out candles explained, "These represent the flames of Hell that are burning him as we speak."

A similar sentiment was offered via an elaborate sign, designed to look like one of Westboro's elaborate wooden "preaching signs," complete with a mimeographed photo of Phelps's face surrounded by flames. "PHELPS SUCKS **** IN HELL," it read in emblazoned red letters on a sunny yellow background.

"After all these years," another protestor said through tears, "He's finally dead. I'm so happy."

Police arrived early this morning to act as crowd control when members of Phelps' family and cult began to leave the Westboro compound, for once finding themselves on the counter side of a protest.

"You're all going to Hell!" Jonathan Phelps, Fred Phelps's son, screamed, followed by a string of expletives, "My father is laughing with God in Heaven now!" Jonathan was among those in the room when his father was pronounced dead. He is currently under investigation for allegedly striking the attending physician and calling him an obscenity.

"Go fornicate one another," screamed a tearful Margie Phelps, daughter of Fred and one of his most active supporters. She, too, was in the room at the time of her father's death, and informed the paper that she would be filing wrongful death charges against the hospital.

"Our father would still be alive if it weren't for fags," said another Phelps daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper. Her husband, Brent Roper, was raised from childhood in Westboro and helped his father-in-law pen a book in the 1980s claiming that Truman Capote introduced AIDS to America following an orgy with tribes in Africa.

No plans were announced for a memorial service or a funeral.


Phelps stands outside a building where a young, gay man committed suicide after being questioned if he was loved by God.

"The fags wouldn't let my father have a proper burial," Margie told DANSTHEMAN.COM, "They'd show up like they showed up out here, acting like the dogs they are. They're lawless. They'd do something horrible. We all know it. Because of them my father can't be laid to the rest he deserves."

In a bizarre display, the minor grandchildren of Phelps were marched out into the front yard at Westboro to stand on the lawn and cry for their deceased grandfather. When this show failed to disperse demonstrators, church member Charles Hockenbarger remarked, "See? They're animals. They don't even shut up for children who are mourning the loss of their grandfather."

"If they think this will stop us, they're wrong," said Fred Phelps Jr., Phelps's eldest son. "We will continue on our father's mission with all the vigor of youth." Fred Jr. is in his mid-fifties. Fred Jr. was in the middle of an interview with television reporters when a telegram arrived at the front door. After reading it, Fred Jr. calmly told reporters that the interview was over and disappeared from Westboro.

A source informed this paper that the telegram was from Della Alexander, mother of Debbie Valgos, Fred Jr.'s former fiancee, whom Fred Phelps Sr. coerced into suicide in the 1970s. Before disappearing In 1994, Alexander told the Topeka Capital Journal, "You tell Fred Phelps I'll wait for him in Hell."

The contents of the telegram are unknown at this time.

Phelps's infamous website, godhatesfags.com, today carried an update that acted as a counter to the page's running timer listing the number of days that gay murder victim Matthew Shephard "has been in Hell."

"Number of days Fred Phelps has been in Heaven," the update read, beside the numeral one.

Deeper into the south, the town of Meridian, Mississippi, Phelps' birthplace, was surprisingly subdued, barely acknowledging the death of one of its most famous sons.

"We weren't particularly proud," a Meridian city council member said, "You won't be seeing any monuments." This sentiment is a far cry from the one expressed at the time of the passing of Fred's father, who worked as a railroad security guard during the depression. The elder Phelps was remembered as a respected community member and upstanding citizen, who survived a mustard gassing during his service in World War I. Fred's sister Martha told the Topeka Capital Journal in 1994 that their father gave them a proper upraising far different from the one that her brother gave his own offspring. After the death of Fred's mother of lung cancer when he was five, the elder Phelps re-married a woman who had been divorced, an act for which Phelps condemned and disowned his father, although he claimed they were still close at the time of the elder Phelps's death.

In addition to being raised by his father, Phelps also had a maternal influence from a beloved aunt who would also leave him prematurely, perishing in a car crash.

Fred Phelps's life of hatred seems to be traceable to his days in Bob Jones University, where, during a mission to Utah, he nearly started a riot during a revival, when he attempted to punch an audience member who'd asked a particularly tricky theological question. Phelps shortly thereafter left the university, citing his opposition to the administration's views on racial segregation. An anonymous staff member told Topeka papers in the early 90s that Phelps left when he was faced with the prospect of being forced to undergo psychiatric evaluation.


One of the Phelps' brainwashed grandchildren holds a sign while protesting the death of a solider who perished, in Iraq in 2003.

Phelps next resurfaced in Pasadena, California, trying to make it a criminal felony to kiss on college campuses, an effort for which he was recognized in TIME Magazine. This crusade came to an end with his first arrest and felony conviction, for assault and battery upon a police officer sent to remove Phelps from a college at which he had not attained a permit to protest. Phelps would shortly thereafter meet his future wife Margerie, the daughter of a couple with whom he was staying while on a mission trip. They would soon marry and have the first of their thirteen children.

Phelps and a friend founded the Eastside Baptist Church in Topeka, but Phelps was abandoned by his congregation for preaching methods that his associate pastor and his flock deemed "sadistic," not limited to but including leaving the pulpit to punch his infant son in the face for crying during a sermon, and demanding that a congregant who had admitted to adultery be publicly scorned and run out of town. After the abandonment, Phelps founded Westboro, the only members being his family and a small cluster of individuals who maintained their loyalties to him from Eastside.

Phelps would go on to an illustrious criminal career, suffering state and federal disbarments for his fervent abuse of the legal system, including libel, slander, and extortion. He nearly served two jail terms in the 50s and 60s, first for shot gunning a neighborhood German Shepherd to death while under the influence of alcohol, then being investigated for brutalizing two of his sons with a pickaxe handle that left permanent injuries. In both instances Phelps used threats of violence and terror to escape any criminal charges. He was also listed as a person of interest in the suicide of Debbie Valgos, but once again threats to the safety of individual police officers lead to his being left alone. Phelps's sons Mark and Nate maintained in 1994 interviews that they believe their father had a direct hand in the death. Phelps was also investigated when his wife was seen around Topeka with a shaven, severely lacerated head and separated shoulder.

Phelps was not so lucky escaping charges when he began his street ministry in the early 1990s, being arrested dozens of times in Topeka and abroad and being convicted of charges ranging from disorderly conduct to libel to assault and battery.

In the final years of his life Phelps's sermons and ideology became increasingly warped, reveling in morbid celebration of the murders of gays and those who perished in terrorist attacks. Phelps himself was nearly killed in 2001 when he showed up at the sight of the World Trade Center attacks to hurl insults at rescue workers and point and laugh as bodies were removed from the rubble. Phelps' deteriorating mental state was also evident in his sermons, in which he referred to president George W. Bush as "worshipping the great god Goober, whose name is Mr. Peanut," and once went into a bizarre, lengthy recitation of Senator John Kerry's family tree and orthodox Jewish names. As far back as the mid-1980s Phelps was known to pepper his sermons with expletives and graphic descriptions of perverse sexual acts. Many Topekans who heard him preach readily accepted the assertion that he was suffering from the middle stages of Alzheimer's disease.

Phelps is survived by the members of his church, wife Marge, thirteen children, fifty-two grandchildren, and one great grandchild.

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