Father Yod(1922-1975)

Born in Cincinnati, James Edward Baker's father was a detective in Chicago who was killed by mobsters under the direction of Capone rival Roger Touhy. A Marine during WWII, Baker earned the Silver Star Medal for heroism at Guadalcanal. He became an expert in judo/jujitsu and in 1948, he won the world judo championship in Cincinnati. He became an avid follower of health, exercise and nutrition lifestyles, graduating from the Swedish School of Massage in Chicago. Baker moved to Los Angeles in the 1950's, married his second wife, Elaine, and was a leather goods worker with a shop in his house in Topanga Canyon. In November 1955, he killed a neighbor with a jujitsu punch to the throat during a fight over the neighbor's pit bull but was acquitted with a ruling of justifiable homicide. In the early 1960's, he ran three restaurants, all the while experimenting with LSD and unsuccessfully seeking stunt work in movies, even auditioning for the part of Tarzan. He began to drink heavily and was cheating regularly on Elaine. In January 1963, he began an affair with TV actress Jean Ingram, who was also married. Her husband was Robert Ingram, a wealthy Orange County hotelier and builder. On January 29, 1963, the jealous Ingram came with a gun to Baker's Sunset Strip apartment, which was over a restaurant he ran at the time, The Aware-Inn. A fight ensued and Baker killed Ingram with two jujitsu chops to the neck and a bullet in the head. In July 1963, Baker was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 1-10 years in prison. He served a fraction of the sentence and by the mid-1960's, was again doing well in his restaurant career. However, he embezzled money from one of the restaurants in which he was part-owner and bought a purple Rolls-Royce, after which his partners discharged him. Baker began to embrace yoga and Eastern religions and in April 1969, he opened The Source on the Sunset Strip, one of the world's first health food restaurants, where organic vegetarian food was served by young white-robed hippies. John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Marlon Brando and Warren Beatty were regular customers. The restaurant proved very successful financially and became a base for the Source Family, a cult of about 150 of Baker's followers, many of whom lived in a 3-bedroom house in Hollywood Hills. Baker christened himself Father Yod, promoting healthy eating, yoga, meditation, and other lifestyles new to America at the time. Members of the cult referred to themselves using the surname Aquarian. However, the cult began to be increasingly associated with the Manson family-inspired backlash towards the hippie lifestyle during the early 1970's and with the changing times and some negativity coming from within the Source cult members themselves, Yod sold the restaurant and departed to Hawaii in late 1974, along with many cult members. A couple of years later, the restaurant was featured in Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977), in a scene where Allen mockingly orders alfalfa sprouts and mashed yeast.

On August 25, 1975, with his cult slowly vanishing and with anger and threats towards the cult from many local Hawaiians, Yod, having had no hang gliding experience and with most of his followers looking on, attempted to hang-glide off a 1300-feet cliff at Makapu'u Point on the island of Oahu. He crash-landed on the beach, dying a few days later from internal injuries. The cult disappeared within two years.