Why Gwen Shamblin's Remnant Fellowship Church Was Investigated in a Child's Murder

Eight-year-old Josef Smith died in October 2003, a day after his parents called 911 from their home in suburban Atlanta, Georgia. They told authorities he passed out while they were in the kitchen, participating in an online prayer session.

Three-and-a-half years later, Joseph and Sonya Smith were found guilty of beating their son to death, and each was sentenced to life plus 30 years in prison. The medical examiner's report said Josef died of blunt force trauma to the head associated with acute and chronic abuse. The Smiths, who claimed Josef's death was accidental, were members of Remnant Fellowship Church, headquartered outside Nashville, Tennessee. The church was founded in 1999 by Gwen Shamblin, who'd created the Weigh Down Workshop, a Christian diet program developed in 1986.

Shamblin, her husband Joe Lara, and five other church leaders died in a plane crash in May 2021.

The boy's death cast a spotlight on the teachings of the church—often described as a cult—regarding discipline. The use of long glue sticks received particular attention by law enforcement and the media.

Josef's mother told police in Cobb County, Georgia that she hit Josef with a "2- or 3-foot-long whiplike glue stick," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in 2003.

Former Cobb County Detective David Schweizer says that he compared a glue stick with fresh marks on Josef's body, and it was a perfect match.

The Remnant Fellowship website promoted discipline of children that included "traditional spankings," and former members said the church condoned hitting children with glue sticks, The Tennessean reported in 2004. One former member said that "there were glue sticks sticking out of diaper bags in the [church] aisles," the newspaper reported in 2007.

In a recorded phone call when Josef was 7, Sonya Smith told Shamblin she was thankful for the "wonderful" advice of church leader Tedd Anger. "I did exactly what Tedd told me to do, to spank him in the back of his thighs" and lock him for three days in his empty room with nothing but a Bible, she said.

That turned Josef's behavior around, and "it's like looking at a different child," she said.

"That's a miracle," Shamblin replied in the call. "You've got a child that's going from just bizarre down to in control. So, praise God."

After Josef's death, Remnant Fellowship was investigated by law enforcement in Georgia and Tennessee; other than the Smiths, no church members were charged in relation to the case. Police who testified during the Smiths' trial in 2007 "said they could not find a link between the boy's death and the church's teachings about punishment," NBC News reported.

Remnant Fellowship Church did not respond to a request for comment.

The church runs a website proclaiming the Smiths' innocence, and blaming ex-church members for making false claims of child abuse against the couple.

"The smear campaign against Remnant Fellowship and its families has been unprecedented and unwarranted," the website says.

Church members helped pay for the Smiths' legal fees. During the trial, medical experts who testified for the defense said they disagreed with the autopsy's findings, and that the marks on Josef's body could have been caused by skin irritation and "explorations from scratching," according to an AP story in The Tennessean.

Schweizer says that after he got a recording of the phone call between Sonya Smith and Shamblin from a source, he drove four hours to execute a search warrant for Remnant Fellowship's facilities in conjunction with local law enforcement.

The search didn't yield anything criminal, so his superiors told him there was "pretty much nothing else I could do," says Schweizer, who retired from Cobb County in 2020 and now works as investigator for the Banks County Sheriff's Office and as a task force officer for the Department of Homeland Security.

Six months before Josef died, 14-year-old Laura Boone, who worked as a babysitter, made a report of child abuse about Josef, without knowing his name. She found out it was him when she saw his face on TV during a news report of his death, she says.

Boone, whose family is not part of Remnant Fellowship, says she started babysitting for the church's families because her neighbors were members. Often, Boone and her friends babysat kids in a large group while their parents attended church gatherings.

Boone says she met Josef in April 2003 when the Smith family attended a church event. She saw Josef crying in a corner, so she asked his father, Joseph Smith, what she should do, she says. "[His father] hit his fist into his hand, and he said, 'hit him hard,'" Boone recalls. "I was shocked. I said, 'no.'"

His father then took Josef into the next room to discipline him, Boone says. "I don't know what he was doing—hitting, spanking, whatever—but we could all hear that happening, and [Josef] wailing."

The next day, Boone and her mother went to Tennessee's Department of Children’s Services to make the child abuse report, she says. "I didn't know the child's name or the dad's name. I knew they were from Atlanta, but there wasn't enough detail for DCS to do a proper follow-up investigation."

Boone described Josef as "pretty rambunctious," with behavioral issues that might have best been addressed by professionals.

Former church member Gina Wilson, who met the Smiths on several occasions, agrees. But the church viewed Josef, who reportedly made threats to kill his family, as "demon-possessed," she says.

"[The Smiths] needed professional help, and they were not allowed to get that," Wilson says, "because in Remnant, you're not allowed to go outside the church to get any kind of counseling or help. At least at that time."

Former member Megan Cox says Remnant Fellowship children were expected to behave perfectly at all times. "We were taught to absolutely and unequivocally submit, and if we didn't submit, there were ramifications," she says.

She and her siblings didn't suffer corporal punishment, but "it was a lot of verbal, emotional and mental manipulation and abuse," she says.

Cox, a member from 2002 to 2006, started The Beyond Zion Foundation to offer support to former and current members of the church.

Wilson says the church put "extreme pressure" on parents like her to ensure their children were obedient and compliant.

"That was a sign, to the world, of God's favor of the church," says Wilson, who left the church in 2012 after 13 years. "If the children were not obedient, you would be losing the favor of the church—and Gwen."

Shamblin discussed corporal punishment in small church member gatherings, saying things like "we weren't spanking them hard enough if they weren't crying and making changes [to their behavior]," Wilson says.

At one point, Wilson says she was told by another member to use a glue stick. So, she brought a glue stick to Shamblin and asked her if it was something she approved of. "[Shamblin] tested it on her arm, tested on her leg, and maybe one other place in her body…and she said, 'Yeah, this would probably be good to use for your son.'"

Wilson says that, ultimately, she decided she was not comfortable doing so.

Shamblin denied advocating the use of glue sticks, but said she used a wooden spoon on her children, the Knoxville News-Sentinel reported in 2004.

Shamblin said she and the church were unduly targeted by the investigation into Josef's death.

"It's an unfortunate taking advantage of the tragic death of a child so they can whip Remnant Fellowship and Gwen Shamblin," she told the AP in 2004.

Wilson attended the Smiths' trial and visited the couple in prison. There, Sonya Smith told her, "I am exactly where I am supposed to be," she says. Joseph Smith wrote letters from prison in which he exhorted the Wilsons to "love your kids," which she took as a sign of remorse, she says.

Eleven weeks before Josef's death, another Smith child, 17-month-old Milek, also died.

Schweizer says he first met Josef when he visited the Smiths' home as part of that investigation. Milek's cause of death would be listed as pneumonia, local media initially reported, but later accounts blamed sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS.

"[Josef] sat at the table eating, and he was wearing long sleeves in summer, but that's not unusual around here, because sometimes people don't want to get darker," Schweizer says. "That [the sleeves might be covering up signs of abuse] didn't click until he passed away. I thought, 'If I would have spent a little more time with Josef, maybe I could have stopped something.'"

Schweizer says he has often thought of Josef over the years, and holds the church "100 percent" morally responsible for his death.