Bad Religion, Bad Checks & the Canadian Football League
How a former cult-killer can teach us the value (and fun) of local journalism.
A sixty-six dollar check bouncing in a small California town shouldn't have mattered much—except this one did, all the way to Regina, Saskatchewan. Like a jack-ball in a bathtub, it careened wildly, kicking up stranger and darker truths with every bounce until it finally came to rest. Behind it: a car detailer, a professional football player, a Federally protected witness, a prolific white-collar criminal, and—most disturbingly—a 404-year-old cult executioner with at least seven brutal deaths to his name.
Even stranger? They are all the same person.
The $66 check for brake shoes probably felt like a minor irritation to the manager of an auto parts store in Cameron Park, California. He called it in to local authorities, let them know that it was a ‘Robert Ramses’ who authored this piece of petty crime and with that, hung up. Annoying, sure—but hardly worth a second thought.
What the manager didn’t know was that the phone call he’d just made was less like reporting a bounced check and more like twisting the cap off a shaken bottle of rot. For three years, something rancid had been sealed tight in the Sacramento area. And now, it was about to explode.
El Dorado County deputies arrested Robert Ramses—the alleged check-kiter—and booked him into custody on February 5, 1999. They sat him down in a drab interrogation room, probably expecting to pass the time with a routine petty crime interview. Nothing about Ramses seemed particularly remarkable, aside from his hulking 6-foot-3, 260-lb. frame. Just a guy who owned a car detailing business, liked a cold beer at his favorite pub off Highway 46, and led a quiet, simple life.
What deputies didn’t know, but were about to find out, was that Robert Ramses wasn’t his real name. His quiet life in California was a relatively new invention. And with just the first question, Ramses started talking. The story he gave them was staggering—unraveling threads so strange, so impossibly tangled, that it was hard to know if it was too strange to be the truth or too strange to be a lie.
Robert Ramses explained to detectives that his real name wasn’t Ramses at all—it was Robert Rozier. The name might sound familiar. Rozier had once been a California-born football phenom, drafted into the NFL by the St. Louis Cardinals1 in 19792. But that wasn’t what he wanted to discuss in their interrogation room.
Instead, Rozier told them about his time as a government witness—and why he was now enrolled in the Federal Witness Protection Program. His new name, his spotless criminal record, his quiet life in California—all of it, he said, was part of the deal. But that quiet, clean present was no reflection of a history anything but clean.
After his brief NFL career fizzled out, Rozier drifted. He bounced from city to city across the United States, eventually landing in Miami in late 1981 or early 1982. That’s where he crossed paths with a group called the Nation of Yahweh.
Founded in 1979 by a man named Hulon Mitchell Jr., the Nation of Yahweh presented itself as a Black Hebrew Israelite religious movement. Mitchell, who would later rename himself Yahweh Ben Yahweh— “God, Son of God”—preached a doctrine of racial supremacy. White people, according to him, were devils—“White Devil”—who deserved death. Mitchell, a preacher’s kid himself (one of fifteen siblings—sweet Jesus, indeed), claimed divine authority and demanded his followers address him as God.
Rozier fell in hard. His towering, 6-foot-3 frame and unflinching devotion to Mitchell quickly earned him a high rank within the group. He was given a new name: Neariah Israel, and an unspoken job title—enforcer.
By the mid-1980s, the Nation of Yahweh wasn’t just a religious group; it was an empire. They were alleged to have thousands of followers and, “satellite temples around the country…a lucrative business empire of apartment complexes, hotels, stores and fleets of Greyhound buses and Rolls Royce cars, all painted stark white.”3
The Yahweh’s rise to wealth and power was anything but peaceful. Rumors of violence and intimidation had long circled the group, but it wasn’t until 1986 that the bloodshed spilled squarely into the public eye.
On October 30, 1986, two men were shot and killed near an apartment complex in Opa-Locka, Florida—a complex the Yahwehs had recently taken over. Tensions between the original residents and the incoming Yahweh members had been simmering for weeks, and local news crews captured footage of the conflict. Two of the men interviewed on camera that day, boldly stating they weren’t going anywhere, were the same two men found dead that night.
The next day, Robert Rozier was arrested. Booked into jail, asked his age, he wrote down: 404 years old. Which, I can only assume, is some poetic way of saying Age Not Found.
But this wasn’t just a routine arrest. Because once police had Rozier in custody, the murders started stacking up. Investigators, through a mix of fingerprints, interviews, and straight-up gumshoe work, began tying Rozier to killings not just in Florida, but as far north as New Jersey. The whispered rumours of Yahweh-backed violence weren’t rumours at all—they were a body count. And there was about to be a reckoning.
By this time, in 1986, the Yahwehs had access to a tremendous amount of money, but at some point, a falling out between Rozier and Yahweh Ben Yahweh meant that Rozier wasn’t going to access that money to get the top-notch legal representation he clearly needed. And the feud also meant Rozier turning against the Nation of Yahweh as a witness.
Alone, Rozier had been charged with four murders, and during 1992 testimony against leader Yahweh Ben Yahweh, Rozier admitted to seven—six of which were ordered by Yahweh. A trademark of a Yahweh hit? Severing the victim’s ear and bringing it back to Yahweh Ben Yahweh as proof of the kill. According to testimony, Yahweh would allegedly toss the ears in his hand like a bag of weed, completely unfazed. The seventh victim of Rozier’s was a panhandling man who simply angered Rozier with persistent requests for money, so Rozier killed him. Just like that.
By the time the dust settled, Hulon Mitchell Jr. (Yahweh Ben Yahweh) was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Rozier, having served just 10 years of his 22-year sentence, was quietly released in 1996. The U.S. government tucked him neatly into the Federal Witness Protection Program, slapped a new name on him and shipped him off to California to start over.
And that’s how Robert Ramses was born.
Just like that. A former NFL player turned cult enforcer turned serial killer turned government witness—now bouncing $66 checks, and sitting across from two small-town detectives who, I’m sure, were not expecting their day to go this way.
I can only imagine the look on the detectives faces as they contemplated the words they were hearing from this local auto detailer, dive-bar-resident. I’m certain this was not playing out how they’d thought when they started their shift at the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office. A bounced check should take no longer than a coffee-break-length investigation to put to rest. This was another matter al-to-fucking-gether, boys.
And listen, let’s face it, would-be convicts can spin tales that get pretty elaborate. But this story must have been stretching it, even for these detectives.
The thing is?
It’s all true.
Rozier isn’t the only Nation of Yahweh escapee that could back up the entire story. In a 2019 interview with The Denver Post4, Khalil Amani, a former Nation of Yahweh member, detailed his own eye witness accounts of the brutality the cult dished out. Just like Rozier, Amani also had testified against the group’s leader, Yahweh Ben Yahweh in 1992, and as a result also had to enter the veiled umbrella of the Federal Witness Protection Program. Amani took up residence in Denver, Colorado instead of California, like Rozier5.
The inevitable question, without a doubt, that one must ask: How exactly did a drafted NFL player end up a 404-year old, serial-killer-in-charge for a murderous cult in Miami?
It seems when Rozier signed with the St. Louis Cardinals, his existing issues with substance abuse and petty fraud would start to pick up momentum. The St. Louis Cardinals promptly cut him, and like any drug-addled American fraudster, the next place to go is Canada. So in 1980, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, a Canadian Football League (CFL) team signs him. Surely, they’d promptly come to regret this decision.
It isn’t clear what happened in Hamilton, Ontario, but allegations of habitual lying, bad debts and finally, missing a practice, got him cut from the Tiger-Cats.
He was then off to Regina, Saskatchewan to play for the Saskatchewan Roughriders6. Right here in my home province, baby.
Through an abysmal 1980 season, Rozier ends up playing just two games for the Roughriders, writes more bad checks, is involved in a commodities futures fraud and then flees to the United States with over 30 warrants from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) fluttering in the wind behind him. After trying out and getting cut from the Oakland Raiders in 1981, Rozier’s football career is over.
Rozier now has warrants out for him all over hell and back, including in California, so he hits the road and makes his way across the country, ending up in Miami, Florida where the rest is cult-killing-history.
The amusing thing to me? Rozier’s story is told all over YouTube and “serial killer” podcasts, some of them even going as far as mentioning Saskatchewan and our beloved Roughriders.
But here in Saskatchewan? No one I spoke with had heard of him.
Now, the truly fun part of local storytelling starts when you’re able to tie together the various parts of the story that to connect to people today—and to people you know.
Because everyone in Saskatchewan knows everyone. That’s a fact.7
To a lawyer friend of mine? Well, the Saskatchewan regulator that dealt with the aftermath of one of Rozier’s frauds in Regina was the founder of his law firm. Lawyer-friend was tickled pink—he had no idea.
That die-hard Roughrider-fan friend of mine? No idea there was a serial-killing nightmare who played under legendary coach, Ron Lancaster8.
The Roughrider quarterback during that abysmal 1980 season?
John Hufnagel9, five-time Grey Cup Champion, legend of the CFL and Tom Brady’s quarterback coach in the New England Patriots 2003 Super Bowl year. This trivia tidbit was also something one of my imprisoned homies didn’t know, and he’s an encyclopedia of NFL facts, stats and gotchas.
I can do this all day—from little ‘ole Saskatchewan.
When I hear that local journalism is dying, dead, or on its way, I think it’s an open challenge for those of us who want to tell stories in our backyard, struggling to get people to listen. We have to do the work to bring the wispy tendrils of facts and anecdotes and connect them to much larger things—like Netflix specials, celebrity podcasts and professional sports. Things that people are paying attention to, it seems.
I know in my small place, we already feel small, so we want to understand how and where this all *waves arms* matters. It makes us feel like even these wispy-tendrils connect us to a larger world—because they clearly do. What happens in Saskatchewan can certainly affect what happens in Miami.
It’s why we have to tell the story of Doug Mouser, in Modesto, California—to convince people here in Saskatchewan that Larry Hartwig and Brad Senger are innocent of driving Neil Stonechild to his death in November 1990.
First, we have to show the people in Saskatchewan that bad people did bad things in California before they came here. How something much larger connects to something much closer to home.
See how I did that?
For More on This Story
One of my favourite podcasters, Dan Cummins, did an excellent (and hilarious) episode on the Nation of Yahweh.
In the most confusing way possible, St. Louis had the Cardinals as an NFL team until 1987; the St. Louis Cardinals today is a professional baseball team.
CLARY, M. (1992, March 29). Star UC Player Now Star Witness in Sect Trial : Cult: Football standout Robert Rozier Jr. tells of random kil. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-03-29-mn-487-story.html
Nation of Yahweh Mourns Loss of Leader, Shows Signs of New Life. (2025, January 10). Southern Poverty Law Center. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/nation-yahweh-mourns-loss-leader-shows-signs-new-life/
Tabachnik, S. (2019, April 23). Death angels, chopped ears and firebombs: A Denver man’s life inside a violent separatist cult. The Denver Post. https://www.denverpost.com/2019/04/23/cult-khalil-amani-nation-of-yahweh/
How Rozier, who was raised in California, played football in California, and had family in California was permitted or managed to be placed in California for his witness protection is a question for another day. I don’t know how these things work.
Saskatchewan Roughriders 1980 Player Roster and Game Particpation on CFLdb Statistics. (Accessed March 11, 2025). Cfldb.ca. https://stats.cfldb.ca/team/saskatchewan-roughriders/roster/1980/
Not true.
Ron Lancaster – Canadian Football Hall of Fame. (2016). Canadian Football Hall of Fame. https://cfhof.ca/members/ron-lancaster/
John Hufnagel – Canadian Football Hall of Fame. (2020, July 16). Canadian Football Hall of Fame. https://cfhof.ca/members/john-hufnagel/