SANDY, Ore. -- Former ghetto pastor Eldridge Broussard Jr., who was awaiting trial in the largest child slavery case in American history, was found dead Thursday.
Capt. Pat Detloff of the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office said Broussard, 38, was found by friends in a house in Sandy, about 25 miles southeast of Portland.
In 1988, four Ecclesia members beat Broussard's 8-year-old daughter to death at the group's farmhouse in Sandy. Authorities subsequently removed more than 50 children from the house, saying they lived in unsanitary conditions and were given too little to eat.
Officials at the state medical examiner's office in Portland said an autopsy revealed signs of 'significant' coronary artery disease, but they said more tests were needed before they could determine with certainty that Broussard suffered a heart attack.
There were no signs of injury or violence on the body, officials said.
There also were no signs of violence in the house, according to Detloff. He said Broussard's friends called authorities about the body at 2:43 a.m.
Broussard was scheduled to be tried next March on charges that he and seven followers enslaved children who belonged to Ecclesia, which was founded by Broussard in Los Angeles as a way to pull youngsters from the ghetto through rigorous athletic training.
U.S. District Judge James Marsh scheduled a Friday hearing on the future of the slavery case.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Peifer, who has called it the largest child slavery case in American history, said he would continue prosecuting the other seven defendants.
In the 1970s, Broussard was a college basketball star at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Ore. After returning to Southern California, he founded the Watts Christian Center and the Ecclesia Athletic Association. The latter group, he said, was designed to save poor children from the drugs and crime of the ghetto by giving them rigorous athletic training. He talked of eventually hostingthe Olympics somewhere in Africa.
In the mid-1980s the group began moving to Oregon and soon had two houses, the one where Broussard was found and another in Clackamas.
Authorities charge that the youngsters were badly mistreated at the Sandy house. They say children were subjected to beatings, excessive discipline, unsanitary living conditions and malnutrition.
In recent years Broussard's followers stopped using the name Ecclesia Athletic Association, but reportedly continued to associate as a group. None could be reached for immediate comment.
