October 13, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, along the shores of Lake Michigan sits a story stranger than fiction: a man preserved in a glass coffin. He was part of the House of David, a communal religious group whose followers built amusement parks, baseball teams, and their own legends. Visitors came from across the country to see him—but not all came with good intentions. Thieves once tried to steal the diamond necklace that lay inside the coffin. For decades, the figure has fascinated locals and outsiders alike, raising questions about faith, spectacle, and how we remember the dead. Chris Siriano of the House of David Museum shares the story of America’s man in the glass coffin.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American stories, and up next a story
you won't forget. In nineteen twenty four, when Soviet leader
Vladimir Lenin died, the Soviets preserved his body by placing
him in a hermetically sealed glass coffin. Lesser known, though,
is that around the same time in Benton Harbor, Michigan,
(00:31):
a religious colony called the House of David, did the
same for their leader. Here's our own Monty Montgomery with
the story of a robbery, a glass coffin, and a
local legend. The year is nineteen twenty seven. The place
Benton Harbor, Michigan, home of the House of David, a
(00:52):
religious colony led by Benjamin Pernow, who preached that if
you followed his message and gave all your worldly possessions
to him, ever die. Unfortunately for ben though, he contracted tuberculosis,
which he died from. Here's Chris Siriano with what happened next.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
He didn't teach ever that he was going to die,
So here he died, and it was pandemonium. It was
mass chaos at the House of David. So Benjamin they
kept wrapped in damp, warm towels for eight days, thinking
that he was going to rise again. Finally the Barren
County corner said, listen, it's been eight days.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
You either bury the guy or we're going to bury him.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
But luckily for the House of David they had the
Soviets to look towards for inspiration.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Well, during that process of having him wrapped like that,
they found out the process that linen in Russia had
been used to embalm and put his body in a
hermetically sealed glass coffin.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
That's what they did, and there Ben Purnell sat for
the next sixty some years in his hermetically sealed glass coffin. Well,
his massive mansion decayed around him as the House of
David dwindled the numbers due to their belief in celibacy.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
But in nineteen eighty eight, twice the House of Diamond
house got broke into but the first time that they
ran quickly. The second time was not a good day.
These kids, these four kids, had studied the movement of
(02:33):
the House of David people. They had sat out in
the woods. They were locals, they were in their backyard. Basically,
they figured out when the House of David people moved
back and forth around the Diamond house. They came back
on a particular day that they knew that there wasn't
much movement. Some one of the weekend days, they cut
(02:56):
a hole in the roof of the Diamond House mansion
where they down and they spent the entire day stealing things,
so vases, earned statues, oil paintings from all over the world.
These things came from the richest of rich people that
joined those things disappeared. Well, one of the worst things
(03:18):
that happened was they weren't satisfied with just items that
were in the rest of the mansion. They wanted to
see Ben because he's that's a big, big, big part
of our local history is him and his body being
in there.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
And they found out that he was in his parlor.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
There's a stone wall that separates the catwalk from the
Diamond House annex into his area, and it's got a
big steel bank vault door on it, so there's no
way you're getting to that door, and there's wire electric
wires like shock wires from the door, so even if
you touch the door, you're probably going to go to
(03:58):
heaven real quick or right. So they went back. One
of them was a contractor. They went back to his
house got a big ramming bar and they rammed a
hole through the stone wall, and they made it big
enough where they could pull the rest of the rocks
out and they could get their bodies through the hole.
And they got into his parlor where his tomb is at,
(04:23):
and I interviewed those people. They told me, Chris, when
we got in there, it was like a pharaoh's tomb.
So around Ben's glass sealed coffin, which was up at
an angle, were piles and piles of rings and diamonds
and rubies and necklaces and vases, And it was like
(04:46):
what happened to the stuff when people came there? The
beautiful things that they came there with, They couldn't have
those anymore, right, they didn't know. They just had to
give them away. Well, they were saved. A majority of
them were safe in the Diamond house. So when he
was buried, he was buried like a farrow and like
(05:07):
an emperor. So they took some things off of that.
But the sad thing was as Ben had a twenty
two carrot diamond ring on his finger and a big,
huge diamond filled and ruby filled white gold custom made
(05:27):
necklace from House of David jewelers. They wanted those things bad,
and they took the pride bar, the ramming bar, and
pried the glass dome off of his coffin, which is
hermetically sealed, can't be sealed again, but they so they
broke the ring off of his finger, broke his finger
(05:48):
in the meantime, and ripped the medallion off his neck,
and the twenty two carrot diamond on his finger was
one of the biggest in the world at the time.
They got away. They got away with that break in,
and it was advertised all over everywhere, all over the country.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
It was a big deal.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Finally, I interviewed the state police officer at my museum
one day and he said, Chris, I'm the one that
made the arrest.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
And I said, tell me about it, and he.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Said, we had we had pictures the House of David
had people had pictures of all these things that were
in the Diamond House. And he said, were Me and
my partner are driving through Benton Heights, which is a
rough part of Dodge in this area, and we look
over and in front of this trailer is this little
nickel plated parlor stove with flowers.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Growing out of it that was it right.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
So they walked up to the door, knocked on the door,
and a lady answered and said, ma'am, we love that
stove that you have out there. Can you tell us
where you or we can get something like that. And
she said, well, my ex gave it to me for
some gift, but he doesn't live here anymore, but here's
his name and phone number. Bam, he gets busted. He's
(07:08):
got loose lips. They all go down right, so come
to find out, and both the people that did the
job did the stealing, and the police officer told me
that what happened was because there was such a massive
amount of things, because it was so written about in
the media, they were afraid to sell up everything. So
(07:29):
they took everything and divided it equally amongst them, and
then they would take it and hide it. One hit
it like in the upstairs of his barn, the other
guy hit it in a storage area in his basement,
the lady hit it Closs and lady hit it underneath
her wrap around her mobile home. None of them sold anything,
(07:50):
so they got all that stuff back except the twenty
two carrot diamond ring, which McCoy brothers appraised at like
two and a half million dollars and the giant medallion,
which was a praise that over half a million dollars.
They found out that those kids took those to the
South side of Chicago and sold them to a jewelry
(08:14):
dealer there like a swap guy, for twelve thousand cash.
And then he back then you didn't have to have
anybody's driver's license, you didn't have to ask questions. You
just bought stuff and sold stuff. So he had taken
the diamond out and sold it to a diamond buying
(08:35):
place in London for like sixty thousand. Supposedly they chopped
it up and sold it off differently so it wouldn't
be detected. But that's all gone now. The scariest thing
was the girl that told me the story. She came
(08:56):
in my museum twice two days in a row, spent
hours without saying word, and finally I went up to her.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
My mom and I were there.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
And I said, you seem really fascinated by this story.
Can you tell me why? And she said do you
want to know? And I said, yeah, I do want
to know. And she said, I'm the one that broke
into diamond house. And I was like, Oh my gosh,
I mean, this is all my stuff is right here
in front of her, and she was capable of getting
into this place. So she went on to tell me
(09:26):
the whole story, the whole all the details. It was
so good. I should have filmed her, but she was
a mammoth girl.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
She kind of killed me.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
But in the end she said, Chris, you know what,
I would do it again.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Right now, she says, it's the best high.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
I ever had in my life. I'm thinking I can't
buy a good enough secury system at this point.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
And it's a big country. My mom used to always
tell me as a kid, explaining the unexplainable to me
and the fun and the weird, and my goodness, this
is both fun and weird, and my goodness, a guy
that tries to basically entomb himself and surround himself with jewelry.
I always think of the great poem by Shelley Asymandias.
(10:13):
And as hard as these guys, and this one sort
of cult leader tried to talk about his eternal life
and everyone else as well. A little something happened. He died,
and everybody else was going to die too. The story
of a strange, almost little cult in Benton Harbor, Michigan.
The House of David. Here on our American stories.
This is our American stories, and up next a story
you won't forget. In nineteen twenty four, when Soviet leader
Vladimir Lenin died, the Soviets preserved his body by placing
him in a hermetically sealed glass coffin. Lesser known, though,
is that around the same time in Benton Harbor, Michigan,
(00:31):
a religious colony called the House of David, did the
same for their leader. Here's our own Monty Montgomery with
the story of a robbery, a glass coffin, and a
local legend. The year is nineteen twenty seven. The place
Benton Harbor, Michigan, home of the House of David, a
(00:52):
religious colony led by Benjamin Pernow, who preached that if
you followed his message and gave all your worldly possessions
to him, ever die. Unfortunately for ben though, he contracted tuberculosis,
which he died from. Here's Chris Siriano with what happened next.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
He didn't teach ever that he was going to die,
So here he died, and it was pandemonium. It was
mass chaos at the House of David. So Benjamin they
kept wrapped in damp, warm towels for eight days, thinking
that he was going to rise again. Finally the Barren
County corner said, listen, it's been eight days.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
You either bury the guy or we're going to bury him.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
But luckily for the House of David they had the
Soviets to look towards for inspiration.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Well, during that process of having him wrapped like that,
they found out the process that linen in Russia had
been used to embalm and put his body in a
hermetically sealed glass coffin.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
That's what they did, and there Ben Purnell sat for
the next sixty some years in his hermetically sealed glass coffin. Well,
his massive mansion decayed around him as the House of
David dwindled the numbers due to their belief in celibacy.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
But in nineteen eighty eight, twice the House of Diamond
house got broke into but the first time that they
ran quickly. The second time was not a good day.
These kids, these four kids, had studied the movement of
(02:33):
the House of David people. They had sat out in
the woods. They were locals, they were in their backyard. Basically,
they figured out when the House of David people moved
back and forth around the Diamond house. They came back
on a particular day that they knew that there wasn't
much movement. Some one of the weekend days, they cut
(02:56):
a hole in the roof of the Diamond House mansion
where they down and they spent the entire day stealing things,
so vases, earned statues, oil paintings from all over the world.
These things came from the richest of rich people that
joined those things disappeared. Well, one of the worst things
(03:18):
that happened was they weren't satisfied with just items that
were in the rest of the mansion. They wanted to
see Ben because he's that's a big, big, big part
of our local history is him and his body being
in there.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
And they found out that he was in his parlor.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
There's a stone wall that separates the catwalk from the
Diamond House annex into his area, and it's got a
big steel bank vault door on it, so there's no
way you're getting to that door, and there's wire electric
wires like shock wires from the door, so even if
you touch the door, you're probably going to go to
(03:58):
heaven real quick or right. So they went back. One
of them was a contractor. They went back to his
house got a big ramming bar and they rammed a
hole through the stone wall, and they made it big
enough where they could pull the rest of the rocks
out and they could get their bodies through the hole.
And they got into his parlor where his tomb is at,
(04:23):
and I interviewed those people. They told me, Chris, when
we got in there, it was like a pharaoh's tomb.
So around Ben's glass sealed coffin, which was up at
an angle, were piles and piles of rings and diamonds
and rubies and necklaces and vases, And it was like
(04:46):
what happened to the stuff when people came there? The
beautiful things that they came there with, They couldn't have
those anymore, right, they didn't know. They just had to
give them away. Well, they were saved. A majority of
them were safe in the Diamond house. So when he
was buried, he was buried like a farrow and like
(05:07):
an emperor. So they took some things off of that.
But the sad thing was as Ben had a twenty
two carrot diamond ring on his finger and a big,
huge diamond filled and ruby filled white gold custom made
(05:27):
necklace from House of David jewelers. They wanted those things bad,
and they took the pride bar, the ramming bar, and
pried the glass dome off of his coffin, which is
hermetically sealed, can't be sealed again, but they so they
broke the ring off of his finger, broke his finger
(05:48):
in the meantime, and ripped the medallion off his neck,
and the twenty two carrot diamond on his finger was
one of the biggest in the world at the time.
They got away. They got away with that break in,
and it was advertised all over everywhere, all over the country.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
It was a big deal.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Finally, I interviewed the state police officer at my museum
one day and he said, Chris, I'm the one that
made the arrest.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
And I said, tell me about it, and he.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Said, we had we had pictures the House of David
had people had pictures of all these things that were
in the Diamond House. And he said, were Me and
my partner are driving through Benton Heights, which is a
rough part of Dodge in this area, and we look
over and in front of this trailer is this little
nickel plated parlor stove with flowers.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Growing out of it that was it right.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
So they walked up to the door, knocked on the door,
and a lady answered and said, ma'am, we love that
stove that you have out there. Can you tell us
where you or we can get something like that. And
she said, well, my ex gave it to me for
some gift, but he doesn't live here anymore, but here's
his name and phone number. Bam, he gets busted. He's
(07:08):
got loose lips. They all go down right, so come
to find out, and both the people that did the
job did the stealing, and the police officer told me
that what happened was because there was such a massive
amount of things, because it was so written about in
the media, they were afraid to sell up everything. So
(07:29):
they took everything and divided it equally amongst them, and
then they would take it and hide it. One hit
it like in the upstairs of his barn, the other
guy hit it in a storage area in his basement,
the lady hit it Closs and lady hit it underneath
her wrap around her mobile home. None of them sold anything,
(07:50):
so they got all that stuff back except the twenty
two carrot diamond ring, which McCoy brothers appraised at like
two and a half million dollars and the giant medallion,
which was a praise that over half a million dollars.
They found out that those kids took those to the
South side of Chicago and sold them to a jewelry
(08:14):
dealer there like a swap guy, for twelve thousand cash.
And then he back then you didn't have to have
anybody's driver's license, you didn't have to ask questions. You
just bought stuff and sold stuff. So he had taken
the diamond out and sold it to a diamond buying
(08:35):
place in London for like sixty thousand. Supposedly they chopped
it up and sold it off differently so it wouldn't
be detected. But that's all gone now. The scariest thing
was the girl that told me the story. She came
(08:56):
in my museum twice two days in a row, spent
hours without saying word, and finally I went up to her.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
My mom and I were there.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
And I said, you seem really fascinated by this story.
Can you tell me why? And she said do you
want to know? And I said, yeah, I do want
to know. And she said, I'm the one that broke
into diamond house. And I was like, Oh my gosh,
I mean, this is all my stuff is right here
in front of her, and she was capable of getting
into this place. So she went on to tell me
(09:26):
the whole story, the whole all the details. It was
so good. I should have filmed her, but she was
a mammoth girl.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
She kind of killed me.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
But in the end she said, Chris, you know what,
I would do it again.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Right now, she says, it's the best high.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
I ever had in my life. I'm thinking I can't
buy a good enough secury system at this point.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
And it's a big country. My mom used to always
tell me as a kid, explaining the unexplainable to me
and the fun and the weird, and my goodness, this
is both fun and weird, and my goodness, a guy
that tries to basically entomb himself and surround himself with jewelry.
I always think of the great poem by Shelley Asymandias.
(10:13):
And as hard as these guys, and this one sort
of cult leader tried to talk about his eternal life
and everyone else as well. A little something happened. He died,
and everybody else was going to die too. The story
of a strange, almost little cult in Benton Harbor, Michigan.
The House of David. Here on our American stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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