The case of the karate champion is one of 14 homicides and disappearances that investigators suspect are connected to Yahwehs.

1 Aston Green, 26, a mechanic.

Nov. 13, 1981: Someone severs the head of Green, a member of a Yahweh defector group. A jogger finds the body in West Dade. A medical examiner says the killer apparently used a machete while Green was still alive.

According to court testimony, approximately 10 sect members took Green into a back room of the temple, beat him, bound and gagged him, wrapped him in a carpet or a blanket, and drove off with him in a red Galaxy owned by Enoch Israel, a "goon squad" security man for the Yahwehs.

Attorney Ellis Rubin, representing the Yahwehs, says, "I had my own investigation of that incident . . . I couldn't verify it."

Case unprosecuted.

2 Carlton Carey, 34, an accountant.

Nov. 14, 1981: Also a member of the defector group, Carey and Mildred Banks, 30, a postal clerk, make statements to homicide detectives about the beheading of Green, their roommate.

The couple tell police they fear for their lives and are thinking about buying a gun for protection.

Early the next morning, as they arrive home in Carol City from the police station, two hooded gunmen ambush the pair. Banks, shot and suffering from a massive neck wound, survives. Carey dies of bullet wounds. Police say the killers apparently intended to decapitate the couple.

The Yahwehs deny involvement in the 1981 homicides.

From a tract: "There were hundreds of people who left our group and decided that they didn't want to follow Yahweh and because somebody, a person is killed, we have been blamed with absolutely no proof. They tied it into us as if we are guilty. They say there is no clue but they still link us."

Case unprosecuted.

3 Leonard Dupree, 22, former U.S. karate champion.

Autumn 1983: The karate expert, branded a dissident, is killed in the Temple, according to public records. His body is never found.

Case unprosecuted.

4 "Melchildechic, " a Rastafarian opposed to the Yahwehs.

1983 or 1984: Yahweh defector Lloyd Clark testifies that a killer confessed to him: "He caught him in like with a headlock and took a knife and ran it across the neck . . . and cut him, and they took him out and buried him somewhere." His body is never found.

Attorney Rubin says Clark is disenchanted, not to be trusted. "I don't put much credence in this guy, " he says.

Case unprosecuted.

5Attillio Scalo, 50, a New Jersey vagrant.

July 3, 1984: Someone stabs Scalo to death on South Orange Avenue in Newark, on the same block as a Yahweh temple. Clark testifies that the killer took him to "a big blood spot" and confessed to him, labeling the victim a sacrificial goat and white devil. Says attorney Rubin: "I know nothing about that . . . I never heard the name."

Case unprosecuted.

6,7 Glendell G. Fowler, 52, a hospital technician. Kurt Doerr, 44, a waiter.

April 19, 1986: A neighbor discovers their bodies, stabbed to death in bed, in a Coconut Grove apartment.

Attorney Rubin says he heard about the double stabbing as a "story" during his defense of a former Yahweh accused of murder.

"I don't know any of the details, and I don't know if it occurred, " Rubin says.

Case unprosecuted.

8 Clair Walters, 36, an unemployed carpenter.

May 22, 1986: Someone slashes his throat and amputates his left ear. The ear is missing from the crime scene. A Miami SWAT team, training in an abandoned motel on Biscayne Boulevard, finds the body.