Detectives in San Bernardino may have caught a break in a more than two-year-old missing persons case that they are now investigating as a possible homicide.
Emilio Ghanem, 40, vanished in May 2023 while on a trip to the Inland Empire. He was last seen at a Starbucks in Redlands.
At the center of the investigation into Ghanem’s disappearance and possible murder, according to the Redlands Police Department, is a Hemet-based religious group known as His Way Spirit Led Assemblies run by a woman named Kathryn Martin who goes by the title “prophetess,” and her husband, Pastor Muzic.
A former member of the organization who did not want to be identified explained to KTLA that the group believes the prophetess is God on Earth.
“When the spirit of God comes over her, everything changes in her, like her voice changes, the way she talks changes, and everything has to be quiet,” he said.
Martin and her husband reportedly have complete control over the group, which, according to the former member, is always preparing for the end of times, storing enough packaged food, water and other supplies to last for years.
Ghanem had been a member of the California group for more than 20 years and just prior to his disappearance, he’d left the organization and quit the pest control company the group runs to move back to Nashville where his family was.
The 40-year-old was working on starting his own pest control business in Nashville and planned to run a satellite office in California, which is why he returned to the Inland Empire area in May 2023, which His Way Spirit Led Assemblies was reportedly unhappy about.
“He was in California to contact potential customers,” Redland PD Public Information Officer Carl Baker told KTLA. “We do know that he had received a cease-and-desist letter from the group or from their pest control company warning him not to contact their customers.”
The former member who spoke with KTLA was planning to help with Ghanem’s Southern California enterprise and admits to being the reason Ghanem was at the Redlands Starbucks the day he disappeared. The pair were meeting to discuss business.
“In the weeks he was out here, he told me that he had already closed $20,000 in less than 10 days of taking [former] customers back,” the member said.
After that meeting, Ghanem reportedly met with a high-ranking member of His Way Led Spirit Assemblies, believing the person wanted help to leave the organization as he had, but the person he met at Starbucks that day believes that was a ruse.
“Emilio asked me about him on a couple of occasions, what I thought,” the former member explained. “I said, ‘I don’t trust him. Don’t meet him.’ There are certain people in the ministry who are what they call ‘hard core,’ and he’s one of them. I would never believe he would leave.”
Now, more than two years later, detectives in Redlands have located the rental truck Ghanem was using during that May 2023 trip and evidence inside of it that reportedly connects to their investigation.
“Those circumstances are such that we are investigating this as a possible homicide,” Baker said.
With help from the FBI, police have executed search warrants at the group’s Hemet property, believed to be its headquarters and a woman affiliated with the organization and another person were arrested that day a few blocks from the Hemet house.
A warrant was also served at the group’s Anza property, with a neighbor telling KTLA that police have visited the location multiple times.
“We’ve spoken to some of the members,” Baker added, “But they’ve not been cooperative with the investigation.”
Redlands detectives are also working with police in Claremont after learning a man named Ruben Moreno, a 49-year-old Perris resident and one-time member of the religious group who went missing in 2017, was last seen at a Claremont residence associated with His Way Spirit Led Assemblies.
KTLA has reached out to His Way Spirit Led Assemblies and the group’s pest control company, Max Shield, for comment and has not heard back.
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