Notorious Cheyenne Cult Murder Happened 24 Years Ago Today

On November 22, 1995, filmmaker Allen Ross disappeared and was never seen again. Five years later, the Cheyenne Police found his body buried underneath the house where he lived on 303 East 17th Street.

Ross had recently moved to Cheyenne with his wife, Linda Greene, and several members of the Samaritan Foundation, a religious cult Greene had founded several years earlier. Greene had convinced her followers to relocate from a former prison in Guthrie, Okla. to the four-plex in downtown Cheyenne. After Ross vanished, Greene disbanded the cult and the members went their separate ways.

Greene was suspected of killing her husband for years but was never charged with the crime. She died of natural causes in 2002. In 2005, cult member Julia Williams was convicted of helping cover up the murder and was sentenced to 34 months in prison.

The gruesome discovery of Ross' body made national headlines in 2000 and later spawned several television specials. In 2001, the documentary Missing Allen was released, followed by a Dateline NBC investigation. Investigation Discovery revisited the story in 2013 on an episode of the series Deadly Devotion. The building where the cult once lived in Oklahoma was also featured on the Travel Channel series Ghost Adventures. 

The house where Ross was killed and his body was later discovered is now the home of the Deselms Fine Art Gallery.