Former Gainesville mayoral candidate Adam Rosenthal (Giles County Sheriff’s Department).
A former mayoral candidate from Florida who is an alleged member of the Christian fundamentalist “cult” known as The Twelve Tribes allegedly murdered another member of the religious sect after vanishing from the city where he ran for office, police say.
Adam Arthur Rosenthal, 39, is charged with criminal homicide, aggravated assault and tampering with evidence for the alleged killing of Darren Gambrel in Giles County, Tennessee, according to court records.
Rosenthal — a mayoral candidate from Gainesville, Florida, who went missing over the summer — turned up in the Volunteer State after allegedly joining the Twelve Tribes earlier this year, police say. He is accused of murdering Gambrel sometime recently, though it’s unclear when, after Gambrel’s body was discovered on a property last Tuesday owned by the religious group, according to the local Pulaski Citizen newspaper.
Giles County Sheriff Joe Purvis told the paper that his department was told about the body that afternoon, prompting them to execute search warrants. Gambrel had been a Twelve Tribes member for several years, according to Purvis. It was not immediately clear what prompted Rosenthal to allegedly kill him, as a motive has yet to be released.
According to the Gainesville Sun, Rosenthal moved to Gainesville from Wisconsin in 2012 to work in the tech industry and filed to run for mayor in June 2022. He described himself in a July 2022 guest column for the paper as being formerly homeless and a victim of domestic violence.
“I was able to bounce back stronger than ever because of the innovative solutions brought by the love of my community,” Rosenthal said. “All of our goals are attainable as long as they are powered by love — love for yourself, your friend, your enemy and your community. Love is the only force powerful enough to transform your enemies by making them your friends. It’s an eternal energy that shapes everything we do for ourselves and each other.”
Rosenthal added, “If we can harness that love, everything is possible.”
The former Gainesville candidate is due in court on Dec. 12.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Twelve Tribes group was “born in the American South in the 1970s” and is allegedly rooted in racism, bigotry and child abuse.
“On first impression its communes and hippie-vibed restaurants and cafés can seem quaint and bucolic,” the legal advocacy group says, describing the Twelve Tribes as an “American white supremacist cult” on its website. “But beneath the surface lies a tangle of doctrine that teaches its followers that slavery was ‘a marvelous opportunity’ for black people, who are deemed by the Bible to be servants of whites, and that homosexuals deserve no less than death.”
Attempts by Law&Crime to reach the Twelve Tribes for comment have been unsuccessful.
