The Septuagenarian Speaks – originally published August 26, 2020, Siskiyou Daily News
His Holiness Master David, aka Robert Martin Lloyd, was arrested Christmas Eve, 1997, in Sacramento while attempting to deliver a teddy bear to the governor. He was arrested on a Siskiyou County warrant arising from an October 1995 report from a woman treated in our hospital’s emergency room who claimed that between September and mid-October a man held her against her will, raped and beat her repeatedly, and broke her leg with a rock. She said she managed to escape from an RV park in McCloud where she and other followers had been staying with a man who had taken the name of “His Holiness Master David,” claiming to be an ordained minister with the “Essence Church of the Fields.”
After his arrest, His Holiness Master David was arraigned in my court, the first of many proceedings spanning two years before he was ultimately convicted and sentenced to State Prison in January, 2000. Thus, more than four years went by from when the crimes were initially reported until conviction. He was apparently hiding out for the first two years, but when his arrest did occur, it was because he turned himself in, informing officers in Sacramento that there was a warrant for his arrest from Siskiyou County. He said he wanted to turn himself in to answer the charges. It seems a little weird for him to do that, but “weird” pretty much defined Master David. Although what he was doing for those two years is a mystery, I can account for what happened during the two years following his arrest. A large portion of that was the result of a court determination that he was mentally incompetent to stand trial.
