Keith Morrison Correspondent • Profile

SAN DIEGO, CALIF. - It was a camper who stumbled on the place deep in the Arizona desert, on the parched earth a few miles north of the Mexican border: a pile of rocks under a Palo Verde tree. A cairn of some sort—a monument.

What was it?  Did it signify something or some person out here in this lonely place, so far from the prying eyes of urban America?

In there, under those stones, was a terrible puzzle. A mystery perhaps without solution.

Who would have believed what was in there?

Ruben Conde A camper stumbled on this cairn deep in the Arizona desert.

Perhaps the place to start is far from that secret in the desert. Down here where the ocean meets San Diego, is a hamlet called Kensington—a slice of small town life in the shadow of the big city. There were  modest Spanish style homes, trimmed front lawns, palm-lined streets.  Middle America by the sea.  There is where Joy Risker lived with her husband and two little boys.

Sheila Goff lived there too, also with her husband and  little boy. And they were as different as chalk and cheese— quiet, generous Sheila and outgoing, effervescent Joy.

It was a fine arrangement. They shared the childcare, housework, cooking.

And they also shared the husband. Sean Goff: handsome, engaging, persuasive, and deeply religious. Sean is a former evangelical minister.  That’s how he met Joy Risker, then just 16. He was her youth pastor.

Married, yes — to Sheila — but by then had  become interested in “Christian Polygamy,” which claimed to be based on the patriarchs of the old testament. And in the summer of 1997, three years after they met  he “married” Joy.  Not legally of course. But it was Biblically sound, he told her, and as Joy told her friends.

Keith Morrison, Dateline correspondent: How did she explain it to you?

Jill, Joy's friend: Just like that. (Laughs) That, you know, she had met someone and she was all in love with him.  And she told me that he was her youth pastor and that her mom gave her  blessing.  And everyone loved him, he was the greatest guy that just happened to be married to someone else.

Joy and Shelia were happy and obedient co-wives.

Morrison: Joy was wife number two. There was already wife number one Sheila. Was there jealousy there?

Saudiya, Joy's friend: Well, Sheila didn’t seem jealous. I mean I’m sure underneath there has to be some part of her that didn’t appreciate what was going on. But she seemed to love Joy. How did Joy feel about Sheila—

Jill: Joy never would have been jealous of Sheila. Because (Laughs) Joy was Sean’s favorite.

Sheila stayed at home—rarely going out with her husband.

While Joy, with her bubbly personality, was Sean’s “public” wife. They took romantic trips and went out dining and dancing often.

Morrison: Always happy?

Joy’s friend: Always happy. Or at least appearing to be. You know—unless she’s having a problem and she’s talking about it. You know?

But people grow and things change.

Joy began to resist the structure Sean Goff established in the house in Kensington.

Morrison: What did she say about her unhappiness?

Jill: She just said that Sean was really controlling and she wasn’t in love like she used to be.

She told her friends she wanted to travel, maybe go to Europe.  And she wanted to go back to school, make a career for herself.

Morrison: So, she was ambitious to do something with her life?

Joy’s friend: She was.

And then, in late September 2003, Joy quite suddenly stopped calling her friends. And when they tried to contact her, Sean, crying on the phone, had shocking news: Joy had left him, left him and the children—and had run off to Europe with an old boyfriend.

Joy’s friend: I don’t know, (laughs) we just thought everything was so weird—we didn’t know how to really take it in.

Joy’s friend: It was strange though.  Definitely. 

Strange, indeed.   She wouldn’t leave her sons, would she?

And wouldn’t she call her friends?

It wasn’t like her.

And far away in the desert, that strange monument guarded its mystery...

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