“They were a church cult – whatever they called themselves. They kept me locked away because I knew what they were doing was wrong, like beating me every day.”
Brie Byrd said she was battered and bruised on a daily basis while growing up as a member of an Inland Empire secretive sect called His Way Spirit Led Assemblies. She tells KTLA’s Mary Beth McDade she was often kept locked up and starved.
“Because I was living off of one piece of bread and one glass of water for about two or three months, I was like 90 pounds and skin and bones,” she remembered. “I was sitting in my own like period pad for that long – just one pad.”
Leaders and members of alleged cult-like California religious group charged with murder
After years of torture, Byrd said she finally escaped at the age of 15. She told KTLA her captors were the heads of the ministry, including its two main leaders, Pastor Darryl “Muzic” Marin and Shelly “Kat” Martin, who calls herself a prophetess.
She said the Martins run the religious group like a cult.
Law enforcement began investigating the group when a former longtime member, Emilio Ghanem, went missing in May of 2023, just days after parting ways with the ministry.
The group’s leaders and three other members have now been charged with the murder of Ghanem and the 2010 murder of 4-year-old Timothy Thomas.
“I hope that they pay for the rest of their life for what they’ve done to me and what they did to anyone else,” Byrd said.
Brie Byrd is pictured in a childhood photograph. (Brie Byrd)
Clarissa Hernandez is pictured with Darryl Muzic Martin. (Clarissa Hernandez)
She said the ministry robbed her of her childhood and her innocence. “I was raped by somebody. He was 18 at the time, and that happened from when I was 10 until I was 13.”
Byrd said she told Prophetess Kat about the sexual abuse. “She punched, like punched me in my face and I got called a liar.”
She also said that children were often separated from their parents and raised by church elders.
The group had several homes in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, with many members living together under one roof. Byrd said every time she tried to run away, she would be locked up in a room and severely punished.
“They would just come in there and beat me with a belt. I had a blindfold on, and then, at one point, they’d switch positions and have me lying down flat and my leg handcuffed to the bed and still continue beating me, had people come in and said horrible, horrible things to me, spit in my face.”
Clockwise: Darryl “Muzic” Martin, Prophetess Shelly “Kat” Martin, Ramon Duran, Andre Thomas and Rudy Moreno. (Colton Police Department)
She wasn’t allowed to watch TV or look at boys, and her hair was cut short as punishment. Byrd said her church services sometimes went all night long, with Prophetess Kat viewed as God on Earth.
“Saying, ‘God is speaking through me.’ She would worship and do all these dances and stuff. It was weird.” Former member Clarissa Hernandez recalled how Kat would act when claiming God was speaking through her. “She’d go and like, start talking, like seizing, and then start talking in this weird accent.”
Members were taught that Kat could perform miracles. “She would say that she could impregnate women who couldn’t be pregnant. She could heal the blind,” Clarissa recalled.
Clarissa also remembered years of abuse, especially for those who didn’t follow the group’s pressure to conform. “You would be either yelled at, you would be hit, you would be starved.”
She said she was forced to pray for hours on end in pitch-black rooms and claimed members were brainwashed into having unquestionable devotion. “The leaders didn’t want you to have contact with outsiders. They would not have me talk to outside people, anybody not from the church, including my family.”
Kathryn Martin, known as the “Prophetess” and her husband, Pastor Darryl Muzic Martin, reportedly control His Way Spirit Led Assemblies in Hemet, California.
Hernandez said young girls were forced to marry much older men. “They would always justify it, saying well, ‘This is what God told us.’”
Members would train and prep for the end of the world and were told by Prophetess Kat that if they followed the rules, they would be saved when the end comes.
“She would say, ‘Oh, God’s going to take me, and anybody that has obeyed me and obeyed Him will go with me,’” Byrd recalled.
A former member who was too afraid to be identified said members had to turn over all the money they made at the pest control company the group runs to the Martins.
“Nobody had income. They were allowed, like, an allowance, so the pastors got everything,” the former member said.
He believes the church leaders went after Ghanem when he tried to start a competing pest control company after he severed ties with the religious organization.
“They didn’t like the fact that Emilio was going to take back his customers, which means the ministry wouldn’t have, or the pastors, Pastor Muzic and Prophetess Kat, wouldn’t have their money,” the member said.
Emilio Salem Ghanem, a Nashville resident, was reported missing on May 25, 2023, after he visited a Starbucks coffee shop on Redlands Boulevard in Redlands. (Redlands Police Department)
The last time he saw Ghanem alive was at a Redlands Starbucks. Ghanem was on his way to meet with one of his now suspected killers, Rudy Moreno.
He warned Ghanem not to go ans saud that Moreno couldn’t be trusted. “He was lying to Emilio, saying he was going to, wanted to leave the Ministry. He wanted to get out and wanted Emilio’s help.”
The Martins are also facing murder charges for the 2010 death of 4-year-old Timothy Thomas, who was in their care at the time. The boy’s father has also been charged with his son’s murder.
“I saw like, where his appendix erupted, and all the stuff on the floor,” Byrd remembers.
Byrd lived in the same Colton house as Thomas when she said the church leaders wouldn’t allow the young boy to get medical treatment as he was suffering from appendicitis.
Four-year-old Timothy Thomas is pictured in a photograph provided by the Colton Police Department. (Colton PD)
“I do remember him saying his stomach hurt, and they wouldn’t take him to the doctor. They were like, ‘No, God will heal him,’” Byrd said.
Detectives suspected neglect played a role in his death and expressed concern that the boy was living in cult-like conditions. It was reportedly hard to prosecute the case back then because members weren’t forthcoming. Many have since left the group and have now come forward to authorities.
As for Hernandez and Byrd, they have their own children now and are grateful their kids’ lives are filled with happiness — unlike the intense pain they endured while growing up.
“When I come home from work and to see them go to bed happy, it just makes me happy,” Byrd said tearfully. “So happy that they don’t have to go through what I did.”
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