Peter Spiegel’s lawyers wrote this fall that his relationship with Prakashanand Saraswati ended on the day of the conviction, March 4, 2011, and that he testified so under oath. Two newspapers reported his testimony at the guru’s punishment hearing four days later: he had seen the guru on the Sunday night in between, the night before the guru failed to appear. One put it at a dinner with other temple members. A month after the verdict, the ashram dropped him from its officers.
Asked this fall when Peter Spiegel’s relationship with Prakashanand Saraswati ended, his lawyers answered that it ended on the day of the conviction, Friday, March 4, 2011, and that he has testified so. On Tuesday, March 8, the Hays County court that had convicted the guru passed his sentence to an empty chair; he had been due in court the morning before and had not come. One of the witnesses that Tuesday was Spiegel, the surety and indemnitor on the guru’s bond, and two newspapers reported the next day, each in its own words, that he told the court he had seen the guru on Sunday night, two days after the verdict. When Reckless Ben wrote that his sources accuse Spiegel of inaccurate testimony about the extent or timing of the relationship, the lawyers called it “an accusation of extremely serious federal crimes that your email does not even attempt to support.”
The guru and his followersSpiegel
Friday, March 4, 2011. A Hays County jury convicts Saraswati on twenty counts of indecency with a child. He stays free on his bond.
Sunday, March 6. By his own testimony two days later, as two newspapers reported it, Spiegel sees the guru that night.
Monday, March 7. The guru does not appear for sentencing. The bond forfeiture cases open the same day.
Tuesday, March 8. Spiegel testifies at the punishment hearing and is served in both forfeiture cases. The jury sentences the guru in his absence.
April 4, 2011. An email to devotees announces the ashram’s new name and other changes; Spiegel’s name is gone from its list of top officers, the Statesman reports on April 14. On April 22 the Hays Free Press reports that “Treasurer Peter Spiegel has also been removed from the board.”
April 4 to June 8, 2011. Spiegel intervenes to contest the forfeiture, then withdraws two days before the State wins it.
September 16, 2026. His lawyers’ demand for correction says the relationship ended on the day of the conviction.
September 24 to October 11, 2026. Asked by email when it ended, the lawyers answer that he testified under oath that it ended that day.
A point in the demand for correction, and two answers in the emails after it.
The demand for correction that O’Melveny & Myers sent Reckless Ben on September 16, 2026, which he read on camera on October 11, lists Spiegel’s break with the guru among the statements it wants corrected: the relationship, it says, ended on the day of the conviction. This site set that point against the bond file and graded it as the company’s assertion. In the emails that followed, Reckless Ben asked when the relationship ended, and the lawyers answered that Spiegel had testified under oath that it ended that day. When he wrote back that his sources accuse Spiegel of inaccurate testimony about the extent or timing of the relationship, they answered that this was “an accusation of extremely serious federal crimes that your email does not even attempt to support,” and pointed to the federal investigation of the guru’s escape. Nothing shown from the letter or the emails says when or where Spiegel gave that testimony. By Reckless Ben’s account the lawyers also sent him about 2,000 pages of reference, which he has not shown.
Two reports from the punishment hearing, written separately and published the next day.
There's been no sign of the swami since Sunday night, when Spiegel and others testified that they saw him at a dinner with other temple members at an Austin residence. (In previous testimony, a witness mistakenly said he was last seen on Saturday). The defendant didn't show up for court 12 hours later, and his car still was parked Monday at a San Marcos hotel.
Infomercial mogul Peter Spiegel, the treasury secretary for Barsana Dham, testified on Tuesday that he did not know where Swamiji or Devi had gone. “I have no idea where he is,” said Spiegel, who added that he saw the guru on Sunday night and there was no indication that he would not show up for court the next day.
The two papers agree on the point that matters here: Spiegel himself told the court he saw the guru on the Sunday night, March 6. The Express-News adds that others testified to the same sighting and that it was at a dinner with other temple members. The Hays Free Press adds that he saw no sign the guru would miss court the next day, and that he said he did not know where the guru had gone. KVUE reported that Tuesday evening that followers last saw the guru on Sunday afternoon at a San Marcos hotel or on Sunday evening at a home in Driftwood, and the Statesman reported in April that he had vanished from a devotee’s Driftwood house where he had been staying.
He also still held office in the guru’s organization. The Hays Free Press called him “the treasury secretary for Barsana Dham” in its report of the hearing. On April 14, 2011 the Statesman reported an email sent to devotees on April 4 that renamed the ashram, and that Spiegel’s name had disappeared from its list of top officers. On April 22 the Hays Free Press reported that the temple’s leadership had “purged board members tied to founder Prakashanand Saraswati,” and that “Treasurer Peter Spiegel has also been removed from the board.” Whatever his lawyers mean by a relationship that ended on March 4, his place on the guru’s ashram board ended a month later.
On the same stand he spoke about the bond. He told the jury he had signed it without knowing what he was signing: “Someone put a piece of paper in front of me and told me to sign it.” Asked how he felt about the money at stake, he said, “I don’t know,” and of his position, “I really don’t know technically and legally of my situation now.” The bond file has the rest: he had sworn in 2008 that he was worth at least ten million dollars to qualify as indemnitor, and Hays County collected about $1.2 million.
What the reports show, and what they leave open.
The end date the lawyers give and the Sunday of the reported sighting are two days apart. On the lawyers’ account the relationship was over on the Friday. On Spiegel’s own account, as reported the day after he gave it, he saw the guru on the Sunday night, while the guru was still free on the bond Spiegel had guaranteed. The reports do not say what the relationship was, in his view or in his lawyers’, and nothing in them is an admission of anything. The Express-News calls the guru Spiegel’s “spiritual mentor,” in its own words, not his. His formal role changed a month after the verdict, when the ashram’s April 4 email left him off its officers.
One more record touches that night. The Austin American-Statesman reported in September 2012 that court documents filed in Hays County, an affidavit for a search warrant, say the guru’s followers met that evening “in a devotee’s home a mile up the road in Driftwood to plan how to spirit him out of the country before his sentencing.” As a former member’s blog published the affidavit’s text that year, it does not say who attended. It names Spiegel once, as the man to whom a preacher at an ashram in India sent the guru’s Indian bank statements; it calls him “a known follower of Saraswati” and gives no date. The bond file reads the affidavit at length. Nothing on the record places Spiegel at that meeting or in any plan, and no record shows anyone charged over the escape.
The newspapers give his words in their own summaries. The transcript of the punishment hearing in State of Texas v. Saraswati, Nos. CR-08-272 and CR-08-273, in the 22nd District Court of Hays County, would give them exactly, with the questions that drew them. This site has not read it, and it has not seen the testimony the lawyers rely on. The reply form is open to anyone who wants to send either.
Sources. Roy Bragg, “Swami skips on $11 million bond,” San Antonio Express-News, posted March 9, 2011. Sean Kimmons, “Missing guru sentenced to 280 years in prison,” Hays Free Press, March 9, 2011. KVUE News, “Hindu guru Swamiji sentenced despite his absence at trial,” March 8, 2011. The Austin American-Statesman, “With guru on the lam, ashram makes changes,” April 14, 2011. Sean Kimmons, “With guru on the lam, ashram changes name,” Hays Free Press, April 22, 2011. Eric Dexheimer, “Wanted Hindu guru escaped to India, officials say,” Austin American-Statesman, September 24, 2012. The affidavit for the 2012 search warrant, as published on October 14, 2012, and the Hays County forfeiture cases 11-0484 and 11-0485, at The bond. The O’Melveny & Myers letter of September 16, 2026 and the emails after it, as shown in Reckless Ben’s video ynmEkCa21-4 at 12:16 to 14:51, read at the letter report.
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