At least 120 people have lived in McCollum Ranch over the years. Here's what several of them remember.
When Yasmine Ford was 6 years old, her dying mother signed over parental control of her and her siblings to John C. McCollum, a pastor who authorities say forced dozens of children to work at his Fayetteville area fish markets for years.
Ford, who is now 23 and lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina, said she had no idea her mother had done that until a reporter told her last week. She broke down in tears.
Though she and her siblings were only children at the time, they say they have memories of living with their mother at the McCollum Ranch outside of Godwin, a compound that the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office describes as an “alternative religious organization.” The revelation that their mother gave parental control over to McCollum is more evidence to them of the influence he had over many women at the ranch in a period of more than 20 years.
Since December, the Sheriff’s Office has arrested McCollum and nine women from the ranch on multiple charges, including involuntary servitude of children, fraud and conspiracy. An undisclosed number of children were removed from the ranch several months ago. McCollum, 67, now sits at Central Prison in Raleigh, where he was transferred from Cumberland County jail because of ill health. His bail was set at $1.1 million.
The Fayetteville Observer interviewed more than a dozen people who lived inside or near the ranch over the years or had family who did; others who interacted with McCollum’s group at his fish markets; and neighbors who described their interactions with people from the compound.
Those who spent time as children at the ranch described fear of discipline and how they were compelled to work various jobs to support the organization. Neighbors and others had more vague understandings of what was going on at the ranch, but several of them recounted experiences that troubled them or at least raised concerns.
McCollum — referred to by his followers as chief apostle, or simply chief, dad or daddy — was a preacher and a businessman who owned fish markets in Fayetteville, Hope Mills, Lumberton and Rocky Mount. Sheriff’s deputies say McCollum recruited women to live at his ranch during tent revivals in North Carolina and neighboring states. They say at least 120 people have lived there throughout the years, not counting children.
Some people the Observer interviewed support McCollum. One man who turned away a reporter at the ranch last week offered that he was “a good man.” Efforts to interview McCollum or his lawyer were unsuccessful.
None of the charges against McCollum or the nine women involve physical abuse, forcing adults to work or preventing adults from leaving the ranch.
What several of the people interviewed by the Observer described is how McCollum appeared to have the unflinching respect of the women who lived at his ranch, and a strong influence over everyone who was part of the organization.
That’s one reason Ford became emotional when talking about her mother and the legal document she signed turning over parental rights of her three children to McCollum in 2001.
She and her older sister, Chianti Ford, who was 11 at the time, find it hard to believe their mother would do that.
A document filed in August 2001 with the Cumberland County Register of Deeds shows that McCollum was granted power of attorney and legal guardianship by the mother, who signed her name as Tia M. McCollum. In it, she proclaimed John McCollum her biological father and wrote, “My children and I lived with my father for the past five years and I am very pleased with the way he cared for us.”
Ten months later, Tia McCollum died at age 31 from complications of lupus, an autoimmune disease, according to a death certificate.
The three children left the ranch shortly after, moving in with their biological father in South Carolina.
“That was no way to live,” Yasmine Ford said, describing her memories of the ranch. “That was not a home for anybody. That was a jail.”
•••
A sign on Dunn Road near Godwin marks the entrance to McCollum Ranch, about 15 miles north of Fayetteville. A rutted, sandy road leads past fields, trailers, broken-down vehicles and, after a hairpin curve, to McCollum’s property. The ranch can be seen from Interstate 95, almost directly behind a large Confederate flag that waves from a pole alongside the freeway. The flag is on someone else’s property.
McCollum’s church, Holy Tabernacle Born Again Faith Inc., bought the property in 1992, according to a deed. Records with the N.C. Secretary of State’s Office show he incorporated the church in 1981.
As a boy, Tobias Gardner used to live in a trailer near the ranch property, which he said at that time was populated largely by women, 20 or more children and ostriches, emus and other exotic animals. Many of the women were the children’s parents, he said.
Gardner, now 34 and living in Fayetteville, ticked off the names or nicknames of children he remembers living there: Josh, Keith, Joe-Joe, Huggie, Boobie, Stephanie, Jacob, Steve, Brian, Ebony, Ivory, Samantha, Benjamin, Raymond, Spoony, Ashley. The list went on and on.
Gardner said he knew the children because his father used to work at the ranch and made his children work there, too.
Although McCollum never harmed him, Gardner said, the minister would instruct his father to beat him whenever he got out of line.
He said he and the other children were forced to wear long clothing that covered their arms and legs.
Gardner, who said he worked at the ranch from around 1993 to 1997, recalled the long nights when children were required to boil peanuts and make candy apples.
“We used to be out there all night long, wrapping candy apples,” he said.
The children would accompany women from the ranch to discount stores, where the fruits of their labor were sold to people at the entrances, Gardner said.
People were told that the profits would help feed the homeless, but that never seemed to happen, he said. Instead, the group returned to the ranch, where Gardner said he saw McCollum distribute some of the money to men who worked for him. Gardner and others said McCollum always drove new Lincoln Navigators and other expensive vehicles.
Gardner’s mother, who asked that her name not be published, said she saw the children selling the apples and boiled peanuts on a couple of occasions.
Yasmine Ford and her sister, Chianti, also remember selling boiled peanuts. Yasmine Ford said about 10 children at a time would dress in long clothing and sell them along roadsides.
Yasmine Ford said she also went to church revivals with McCollum. Inevitably, she said, women would follow them back to the ranch.
“Like my mom, they thought that was home,” she said.
The feeling of home may not have lasted long. Once the women settled in, Gardner’s mother said, they followed McCollum’s commands.
“There was a lot of stuff going on,” she said. “He was the type of man, he was in control of everything that was going on. You couldn’t do this, you couldn’t do that.
“If a woman just wanted to go out of the house, they would have to say, ‘Dad can I go outside,’ or ‘Dad, can we go to the store?’ It was like he was God.”
•••
At McCollum Ranch last week, a man approached before an Observer reporter and a photographer could get close to the living quarters.
"Don't believe everything you read," said the man, who was polite and identified himself only as a friend of McCollum's. "There's a lot of misinformation and false accusation out there."
As the Observer employees turned to leave, the man offered: "He's a good man. I'll just leave it at that."
Jeremy Jordan said he always thought McCollum was a good man, too. Jordan said he was homeless when someone gave him McCollum’s phone number. After talking to the man he now calls Chief, Jordan said he went to live at the ranch.
Jordan said McCollum bought him clothes, gave him food and allowed him to move into one of his mobile homes. McCollum also paid him a fair wage to play the organ at tent revivals, he said. When Jordan landed a full-time job, McCollum loaned him a car so he could get back and forth to work.
Jordan acknowledged helping to boil peanuts and seeing children selling them, but he said it never crossed his mind that anything may have been wrong. Jordan also said he never saw McCollum hit any of the children, other than a tap on the hand, while he lived there from 1999 to 2002 and again briefly in 2004.
“He’s helped a lot of people,” Jordan said. ”He’s helped thousands of people.”
A Godwin business owner who has done work for McCollum for years said he felt bad for McCollum and the others who live on the ranch.
"They seem like nice people," said the man, who asked not to be named. "They didn't seem like slave drivers. I think those guys got a bad rap. ... We've been here since 1979. I've been knowing these people. They paid for what they got here. I can't see him making them work for nothing."
The man said McCollum would take people off the street. In exchange, he said, they were expected to do chores.
"They're doing chores for the place where they stay,” he said. “I think they blowed it out of proportion — the money aspect."
In Godwin, an elderly woman who lives in a string of houses and mobile homes not far from the ranch said McCollum and the other residents there were good neighbors.
"They've never done anything to us," she said.
Another neighbor, a 52-year-old woman who has lived nearby for 30 years, said women from the ranch have come to her door and asked “to get them out." She said she came to believe that it was difficult for women to leave the property.
Largely, those who live on the ranch keep to themselves, she said.
•••
Newspaper archives show that McCollum accepted a plaque in March 1990 on behalf of his late father, who helped found the Fayetteville chapter of the National Association of Colored People and once served as its president.
The NAACP chapter’s current president, Jimmy Buxton, said he has never met McCollum, but he had heard about his ranch.
"I always knew it was something of a compound," Buxton said. "I was told that for years. We had no dealings with him."
Two months before accepting the plaque in 1990, McCollum, along with his wife and two others from the ranch, were charged with physically abusing four children in their care. McCollum pleaded guilty to misdemeanor child abuse and was sentenced to probation, court records show. Two of the women charged in that case are among the 10 people facing charges today. A victim from the 1990 case is now one of the accused.
The McCollum Ranch appeared in the news again in October 1995, when about 250 people attended the ranch’s annual “Homeless Dinner” featuring gospel and an all-you-can-eat buffet. The Observer reported 26 people from Fayetteville’s Maranatha House, a former nonprofit organization that helped the homeless, were guests of honor. In the article, McCollum said church members raised money all year to pay for the event..
•••
At various times, McCollum operated John C’s Fish Markets in Fayetteville on Murchison Road, Ramsey Street and North Reilly Road, as well as John C’s Country Kitchen restaurant on Murchison Road. He also owned fish markets in Hope Mills, Lumberton and Rocky Mount. It appears that all of the markets have closed since the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office started its investigation into the ranch in February.
That’s when a man and a woman who had been living there complained that children were working in the markets for little or no pay. According to the Sheriff’s Office, the investigation expanded when a 15-year-old who had run away from the ranch told deputies that he rarely got paid for working more than 40 hours a week at the markets and for helping repair McCollum’s mobile grills.
Sheriff’s Sgt. Christy Booyer, the lead investigator, said children as young as 9 were made to cut, clean and ice the fish. Booyer said the children lifted 50-pound boxes and often cut themselves with filet knives. If they didn’t work as instructed, arrest warrants say, the children were threatened with physical punishment or having their food cut off.
Sheriff’s Lt. Sean Swain said investigators believed children living on the ranch were not being properly educated. Although the ranch had a license for a home school, children rarely or never attended, authorities said.
Meanwhile, authorities allege, McCollum and others working at the ranch were filing fraudulent high school transcripts with Wake Technical Community College and other places to obtain financial aid money. Booyer said federal authorities estimate that the ranch received as much as $500,000 in financial aid payments.
According to state records, Brenda J. Hall filed paperwork to operate a home school called Halls of Knowledge, also known as Halls of Learning, on June 20, 2000. She was arrested with McCollum in December.
The school was still operating as of July of last year, state records show. Four months later, on Nov. 3, the state Division of Non-Public Education received two citizen complaints against the Halls of Learning mailed from the Cumberland County Department of Social Services.
One was from a person who lived at the ranch: "... They do not go to school and they are not being home schooled or in any classes." The complainant said the home school was falsifying paperwork and making fake IDs and diplomas to get funding.
Hall closed the school on Nov. 17, according to the state Department of Administration. By then, DSS had removed children from the ranch and placed them in protective custody. Swain said deputies accompanied DSS social workers to the ranch in August to provide security while the children were being removed.
Brenda Jackson, the DSS director, declined to say how many children are in custody because of confidentiality laws.
•••
Terry Farnsworth said two of the children who are in foster care are her grandchildren.
Farnsworth’s daughter, Kassia Rogers, is one of the nine women from the ranch who were arrested with McCollum. As she sits in jail, her mother is seeking custody of her grandchildren. She wants them to live with another daughter, who operates a foster home in New York.
Farnsworth described her daughter as someone who always loved music and reading. She also was headstrong and did not take direction or authority well. That ended when she wound up at the McCollum Ranch in 2006, her mother said.
Rogers had reconnected with a friend who had moved to the ranch. During conversations with her friend, Rogers was introduced to one of McCollum’s “adopted” sons, who persuaded her to come to the ranch for a visit, Farnsworth said.
“The day Kassia got off the bus there, John McCollum said Kassia and his son were married,” said Farnsworth, who now lives in upstate New York. “There was no ceremony, no papers, no license, just his statement. Kassia later told me that John McCollum — ‘Daddy’ — told her that he had had a prophecy that a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl would come into his son's life.
“Many times early on,” Farnsworth said, “I would get calls from Kassia while she was with a group of other women selling their boiled peanuts and candied apples and collecting donations. I would constantly hear her asking people to ‘feed the hungry children’ and I would cringe because I never really believed that was the case.”
Farnsworth said she tried to question her daughter but was told that if she didn’t stop, she wouldn’t be able to talk to her any more.
“Kassia started really changing after she got there,” Farnsworth said. “Instead of the headstrong girl she had always been, there was a meek and quiet girl that was afraid to speak without permission. She had to ask permission for everything. She had to ask if the name she picked out for her daughter was acceptable.
“With her second daughter, ‘Daddy’ told her what her name would be. She had to ask ‘Daddy’ if it was okay for some of the women to hold the baby when she brought her home from the hospital and he said no.”
In 2009, when Farnsworth moved to New York to be with her other two daughters, she said she begged Rogers to go with her. Rogers refused.
“She was convinced that she could not take care of the girls by herself,” Farnsworth said.
Rogers eventually did move out after the birth of a second daughter. Farnsworth said she brought her daughter and grandchildren to New York to live with her. It didn’t last long.
Rogers stayed in touch with people at the ranch, and Farnsworth believes they persuaded her to return. Two men came to pick her up, Farnsworth said.
“It literally broke my heart when I knew they had gone back to that place,” she said. “To this day, I believe Kassia was punished in some way for leaving, but especially for taking the girls away. She has never said that, but I went months without hearing from her.”
In more recent years, Farnsworth said, her daughter became more involved with the fish markets.
“She worked long hours five or six days a week and never saw a penny,” Farnsworth said. “When she or the girls needed anything, she had to ask for it. I hated that control and she knew it. I would often ask her why she had to ask permission for everything. She said she was showing respect to Daddy because it was his house.”
Now Rogers faces charges including involuntary servitude of a child victim, conspiracy and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
“I don't know what is going to happen,” Farnsworth said, “but I do know that this girl is not the same girl I raised.”
Staff writer Greg Barnes can be reached at gbarnes@fayobserver.com. Staff writer Michael Futch can be reached at mfutch at fayobserver.com or 910-486-3529