Jon Tuttle papers about the Rajneesh

Jon Rogers Tuttle was born in 1941 in Portland, Oregon, and grew up in Portland and in The Dalles, Oregon. He briefly studied at Portland State University before enlisting in the U.S. Air Force, for which he worked as a linguist. During his service, he studied Albanian, Russian, and Spanish at Indiana University. He later returned to Portland State University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in journalism.

In 1966, Tuttle began working for the television news station KGW in Portland. In his career at KGW, Tuttle won a Peabody award in 1984 for an eight-part documentary on the Rajneesh, titled "Rajneesh Update." In 1989, he became a documentary producer for Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB). In that role, he won a Gold Plaque Award from the Chicago International Film Festival for "Anatomy of an Oil Spill," a 1990 OPB documentary about the Exxon-Valdez disaster. Tuttle died in 1991 of complications from leukemia.

Source: Obituary in the Oregonian, July 30, 1991, page B3.

The Rajneesh were a a religious movement headed by Indian spiritual teacher Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (later known as Osho, 1931-1990), who developed an international following in Pune, India, before relocating to the United States in 1981. In the U.S., he and his assistant, Ma Anand Sheela, purchased the 64,000-acre Muddy Ranch in Wasco County, Oregon, to be the site of a planned community. The settlement attracted followers from North America and Europe, and within two years had approximately 7,000 residents. The Rajneesh also purchased a hotel in downtown Portland.

Over the next few years, the Rajneesh attempted to increase their influence, which became a source of conflict both locally and with the state. Adherents gained control of the town of Antelope, a small community near the ranch, and renamed it Rajneesh. Leaders of the Rajneesh tried to incorporate the ranch as the city of Rajneeshpuram in order to skirt state land-use laws, and the Rajneesh also attempted to gain seats in Wasco County government by transporting unhoused people to Rajneeshpuram to live and register as local voters.

In 1984, Sheela orchestrated the contamination of salad bars at restaurants in The Dalles, Oregon, with salmonella, which sickened 750 people. Amid evidence of this and additional crimes, she and other Rajneesh leaders fled in September 1985. Sheela was later prosecuted and sentenced to federal prison; after her release, she was deported and moved to Switzerland. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh denounced Sheela and left Rajneeshpuram in October 1985. He was indicted on federal immigration charges and accepted a plea deal in which he agreed to leave the United States. He eventually returned to India, where he died in 1990.

The Muddy Ranch property was sold and later donated to the Young Life Christian youth organization, which has operated a summer camp at the site since 1999.

Sources: "Rajneeshees," by Carl Abbott, Oregon Encyclopedia, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/rajneeshees/; "City of Antelope and Muddy Ranch," by Jarold Ramsey, Oregon Encyclopedia, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/city_of_antelope_muddy_ranch/; "Ma Anand Sheela (b. 1950)," Oregon History Project, https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/articles/historical-records/ma-anand-sheela-b-1950/; "Rajneeshpuram: Inside the Cult of Bhagwan and Its Failed American Utopia," by Russell King (Chicago, Ill: Chicago Review Press, 2022)