Metro-Dade detectives John King and Steve Roadruck went to the Temple of Love. They noticed green carpet; they'd found a piece of the same kind at the decapitation crime scene. They tried to interview sect members.

Mitchell and his companion, Linda Gaines, wouldn't cooperate, said Roadruck, now a private investigator. "Everyone was closed mouthed."

Police looked for other defectors. Carey, Banks, Burke and Green had belonged to a dissident group of a dozen or so.

"The day Carlton Carey was killed, the defectors blasted out of Miami like a shotgun, " said one detective. So did Eric Burke, the man who started it all.

Detectives had another obstacle. A 1981 newspaper story spelled it out: The state was reluctant to "go after" a black religious leader.

"We always felt somewhere along the line, someone would trip up, and they'd start talking, " said Roadruck.

Nothing surfaced publicly for four years. Then, in late 1985, police acknowledged that they had physical evidence linking the sect to the decapitation.

By that time the law-enforcement community -- including the FBI and the Metro-Dade Organized Crime Bureau -- had a massive "intelligence" file on the Yahwehs, mostly hearsay.

Dade authorities had also heard about sexual child abuse.

They collected sect-published literature reminiscent of the People's Temple of the Rev. Jim Jones in Jonestown, Guyana. "We have come to the point where we must find Justice for ourselves or commit suicide, " one Yahweh book declared.

The Yahweh case lay all but dormant until May 20, 1986. Two police officers in Delray spotted a white van parked on a lonely farm road. The people inside were making Molotov cocktails. The officers smelled gasoline, but didn't want to cause trouble. They jotted down the license tag.

A couple of hours later, just three blocks away, the firebombs exploded on a dead-end street. Two children were badly burned. Neighborhood residents suspected Yahwehs.

The next day, Delray Sgt. Robert Brand went to the place where the van stopped and from the sandy grass collected samples of a gasoline-kerosene mixture. The samples matched the homemade bombs.

Police traced the license tag. It belonged to Miami Yahweh. Sgt. Brand visited the temple in Miami. In a display case, he noticed an unusual-looking wine bottle -- the same kind used to bomb the homes.

Is it for sale? he asked a Yahweh woman. No, she said. But everything else in the display case was.

Not long afterward, investigators got a break. A Yahweh elder, Lloyd Clark, walked into Miami FBI headquarters. He felt guilty about the infant girl burned in the bombing. He talked about the bombing, murder, child abuse and welfare fraud -- all Yahweh connected, he said. He named names.

Clark admitted taking part in Yahweh beatings. "Like Col. North, I was following orders, " he said later. "I'm kind of ashamed now." The FBI told the Metro-Dade detectives about Clark.

A lot Clark knew third hand. To investigators, his testimony was intriguing, but not solid. Detective King and two FBI agents began tracking down leads.

Some defectors said they knew about a public execution in the Temple of Love of a karate expert from New Orleans. They even saw it.

Still, there was no corpse, and Dade prosecutors felt there was not enough evidence to charge anyone with a crime.

Another highly public episode occurred in October 1986: Two limousines, six buses, a van and several cars pulled up to a rat-infested Opa-locka apartment complex. Seventy-five Yahwehs piled out and surrounded the building, clenching six-foot sticks called staffs of life. The Yahwehs ordered the tenants out.