The standout star of Netflix’s documentary was once prosecuted for attempted murder. Now she runs a care home in Switzerland, where she remains unrepentant – and a little bit scary

The walk to Matrusaden up the hill from the bus stop in the village of Maisprach is a hot one today. It’s worth it for the view alone – of a ridiculously pretty valley full of vineyards and orchards, June birdsong and butterflies. This is chocolate-box rural Switzerland.

Matrusaden – it means “home of mother” – is a residential care home for people with mental illnesses. The owner, a delicate-looking Indian woman in her late 60s, comes out to greet me and we sit down in the shade. She doesn’t look much like an international criminal – wiretapper, fraudster, poisoner and would-be murderer.

Sheela Birnstiel, previously known as Ma Anand Sheela, was, in the early 1980s, personal secretary to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the guru and leader of the Rajneesh movement. Personal secretary/spokeswoman/lieutenant … she ran it, basically. During a period when Bhagwan vowed silence, she was his voice. When Bhagwan and his followers were forced out of Pune, in India, in 1981, they relocated to Wasco County, Oregon, and built a city, Rajneeshpuram, in the middle of nowhere where they could practise his mix of eastern mysticism, western philosophy and free love. To the Oregonian locals they were a dangerous sex cult.

It didn’t end well; it wasn’t Jonestown bad, but it might well have been. There was an arms race, arson, espionage, drugs, Learjets and Rolls-Royces, immigration fraud, and a bioterror attack in which the salad bars of several restaurants were infected with salmonella and dozens of people were hospitalised. Sheela ended up in jail.

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The story has been elbowed back into the world’s consciousness by the brilliant Netflix documentary series Wild Wild Country, which focuses on the conflict between the Rajneeshees and the Oregonian locals and officials, and in which Sheela is the standout star – star, anti-hero and villain.

While we’re sitting outside, one of Sheela’s employees brings out cold water, hot coffee and biscuits. Should I trust the biscuits, I wonder. Sheela, who is 69 and a half, is a little frail at the moment, she says; she hurt her back trying to stop a patient from falling and she is in a bit of pain. Another of her patients – Cristina, who has been at the home for 15 years – comes over to say hello. Next we are joined by Sheela’s dog, Kora, who is very old and frail, and has a large malignant tumour on her cheek. Sheela doesn’t think he is in pain. It seems like a peaceful, happy place. I am feeling more confident about the biscuits.

Can this really be the same woman who threatened the American way of life, stuck up a middle finger and had the catchphrase “tough titties”? She will still give people – me included – the finger “if needs be”, she says, and she’ll be very clear if she doesn’t want to answer a question.

In Wild Wild Country, Sheela comes across as obsessed (with Bhagwan; for her, it was – and still is – all about him). But she is also manipulative and power hungry; she does some bad things. But then she was a powerful woman way back in the 80s. Plus she said what she thought and she got things done – not least building a city for 10,000 people, complete with a shopping centre, pizza parlour, meditation hall and an airport. A reaction I have heard a lot and seen on social media goes something like: “Oh my God, it’s probably wrong to, but I bloody love Sheela. She’s proper badass.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ma Anand Sheela in 2018: ‘I don’t need any more confinement. I’ve done my confinement.’ Photograph: Marta Perez/EPA-EFE

She has heard the word, the badass one, in connection with herself. Does she like it? “It’s supposed to be complimentary, I understand.” And which is she – a pioneering and inspirational example of girl power, or a megalomaniac monster and criminal? “Let people decide,” she says. Would she describe herself as a feminist? “No, I don’t describe myself as anything. I describe myself as me. I have heard since the film has come out that people think I’m a feminist, but I don’t know what gives them that idea.”

Well, the fact that she was in charge and it looked like there was some kind of equality there. Or at least that was the intention, I guess.

But on that subject, what about all the sex? Bhagwan advocated an open attitude to sex, and everyone in Rajneeshpuram was at it everywhere all of the time (that’s certainly how the God-fearing locals saw it). Is that free-love approach more of a male utopia than a female one? “You could say that, because males are more sexually orientated than females. While females have been, until now, in a place of oppression, men have always been given more freedom. From that point of view, your analysis is accurate, that it is a male idea. And, of course, this open speaking about sex came from Bhagwan and he is also male, so one can say it is a male idea. But I personally don’t feel it should be male and female separated; it’s human. We see it also in animals. They don’t make a big fuss about it; when spring is there they enjoy their moment of sexuality.”

Does she feel there was sexual equality at Rajneeshpuram? “For me it was equal.” And she was the boss? “Well, I took care of the practicalities, that was my job, that was what was assigned to me, and I was happy to do it.”

Did she, does she, enjoy power? “There’s nothing to enjoy. When you have power, you don’t seek power and I think I have enough.” But you didn’t have it, you got it. You must have wanted it? “I was given power, I didn’t snatch power from anybody.”

On the impact of the show, her sudden global fame (or infamy) hasn’t affected anything, she says. She’s still the same person as before and people who know her will say that. One thing she does like is that she has become “cause for thought for many people. My father always said I must always speak, whether people understand and do me justice or not. I must speak my experience; it is very huge and they all can learn a lot through me, they can be inspired.”

She did turn down appearing on the Indian version of Big Brother, as she felt she couldn’t spend the time away from the people for whom she is responsible. “I don’t need any more confinement, I have done my confinement,” she says.

Sheela says she hasn’t watched all of Wild Wild Country and fast-forwarded through a lot of it, only slowing down for the bits that were new to her. Such as? “Bhagwan’s anger. I was already gone then. So, for me, that part was new.”

She is talking about when, after the net was closing in on her, she escaped from Rajneeshpuram (not, she points out, sneaking off as has been suggested, but waved off by 300 people at the airport). And Bhagwan’s response? He said: “She did not prove to be a woman, she proved to be a perfect bitch.”

It must have been upsetting to see that? “Sad,” she says. “When I was there, I was the star of his eyes. It made me sad that he had to stoop to that level. A man of his calibre does not have to go there; it only shows his sorrow that I left.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and Sheela leaving the US Immigration and Naturalization Services building in 1982. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

She doesn’t seem to think any less of him because of it. “How can one’s opinion change because someone said something negative about me? I love the man, I still love him.”

And he loved her back. You can see it in photographs of them together, she says. The way he looks at her, in his eyes. Did they have sex? “No, sex had nothing to do with it.” And it didn’t bother her that he was having sex with lots of other people?” “What does love have to do with sex? We are taught to associate sex with love, to compensate. You feel sexual but are afraid to declare it, you say: ‘I love you.’ In my life, it has always been separate. I can tell someone I want to go to bed with [them], I have no qualms about it and enjoy being in bed. And if I love somebody, I love somebody – they are two separate events.”

She doesn’t feel duped at all? “No, because I was there because I wanted to be there, and I would do it again. It was a very powerful creative project.”

What about remorse? “Remorse for what? Having a good life?”

OK, time to talk about the crimes, I think. You will know, if you have seen Wild Wild Country (and if you haven’t, you must), that after flying out of Rajneeshpuram, Sheela fled to Europe, but was arrested in Germany in 1986 and extradited to the US on charges including wiretapping, immigration violations and attempted murder. The US attorney prosecuted crimes related to the restaurant poisonings. The Oregon attorney general prosecuted for crimes relating to the attempted poisoning of two Wasco County officials, as well as a poison syringe attack on Bhagwan’s own doctor, Swami Devaraj.

Sheela took a plea-bargain and pleaded guilty to the lesser charges of immigration fraud and wiretapping (of Bhagwan’s house, which she says was done with his consent, for his own protection). She pleaded guilty to the salad bar poisoning on a so-called Alford plea, meaning that she doesn’t admit to doing it but didn’t have the $2m it would cost to fight the charges. In state court, Sheela pleaded guilty to the attempted poisoning of two county officials as well as Bhagwan’s personal doctor. In the end, with time off for good behaviour (including painting her prison unit), she spent only 39 months in prison.

So you didn’t poison anyone? “That’s right.” Who did? “Why do you ask me?” And the doctor, did she poison him? “Not my cup of tea.” What – him, or talking about it? “Both are not my cup of tea.”

Hmmm. OK, so what about the shocking episode in which thousands of homeless people were bussed in to rig a local election? “We offered them an alternative lifestyle,” she says. You were using them, cynically, for your own political needs. “This is a custom of every major election: people clean up the homeless and send them for voting. I was told this by a politician.”

It’s not common practice to sedate homeless people, though, is it, which hers were? “Don’t ask me because I am not aware of it.”

While we are on politics, I want to know if she, as a former cultist, can see any cult-like behaviour in the current US administration? And this is when Sheela gets cross, steely and a bit scary. Not so much about the Trump comparison, but about my use of the C-word.

“Your choice of words is totally wrong,” she says. “Let me explain to you how I see a cult. A cult is something you don’t understand, something you presume has nothing to do with reality. Nobody told me to go to Bhagwan, we each came from our own journeys. The gates were always open if someone wanted to leave, it was not confinement. I find this approach to negate something by calling it a cult so disrespectful. It’s like racists saying someone dark-skinned is automatically criminal. It’s so degrading.”

It was a way of life, not a cult, she tells me. Oh, and she is no Trump fan either. I just about pluck up the courage to say that I saw her somewhere being compared to the presidential counsellor Kellyanne Conway. “No, I don’t allow that comparison, that much pride I have,” she says, but at least she laughs now. It’s a good time to start the tour, I think.

She points out things in the view: the hill called Sonnenberg – Mountain of the Sun – and the vineyards (Sheela gave up drinking wine after working with alcoholics). How would she feel if 10,000 Oregonians suddenly arrived and set up home in this lovely valley, I wonder. “I hope they wouldn’t ruin it, but I don’t think they would move here; it wouldn’t suit them, it’s a bit more civilised,” she says, and she laughs. That’s something you see in the series, too, the perception from the Rajneeshees that they were superior to the Wasco County locals, cleverer and more civilised. The prejudice flowed in both directions.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sheela in a police mugshot from 1985. Photograph: Donaldson Collection/Getty Images

Sheela shows me a remembrance stone to her parents that features a photo. Her father, with a long beard, looks not unlike Bhagwan. “Oedipus complex,” she says, agreeing.

There are more photos of her parents on the walls inside. And of her daughter – adopted, with the first of Sheela’s three husbands. She lives in California with her own daughter, Sheela’s granddaughter. And there are lots of photos of Bhagwan, and of them together, including one of Sheela with her eyes closed while he touches her forehead with his finger, as if blessing her. In the bedroom Sheela shares with her older sister, Mira, and Kora the dog, there is another big photograph on the wall of Sheela, crouching at Bhagwan’s feet, serving him champagne. What were you celebrating? “Just being near him, nothing more than that.”

Bhagwan might have said some horrid things about her, he might be long gone (he died in India in 1990), but I think it’s fair to say the obsession is alive and well.

Actually, the champagne photo was taken on the plane on which they flew out of India when they left for the US in 1981. They booked the entire top deck. Bhagwan wasn’t the sort of guru to eschew material things: he had 93 Rolls-Royces.

Sheela introduces me to Mira, who doesn’t much care for journalists. “Everyone wants to make their living at her cost and that bothers me,” Mira says. “Always negative, many years now the past is gone, nobody looks at the positive things.”

Well, here’s something positive. Matrusaden seems like a brilliant place, open and integrated and warm. “We are not afraid of illnesses,” explains Sheela. “We are not afraid of anything and we want people to feel at home. We take people where they are; people must not comply to our needs, we comply to their needs.”

I meet more of the 29 patients, who are playing bingo with the therapist who comes in four times a week. They come from Switzerland, Turkey, Brazil and Vietnam. And I meet a lot of the staff, who are from Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. There are 15 nationalities in total, between staff and patients. Lots of them – both staff and patients – have been there for many years.

Does it bother them that the boss is an international criminal? They laugh. No, they see her working from 7am to 7pm seven days a week, dedicated and committed to caring for the patients. You can’t be in this business for 30 years and not care about people. They could just be saying that because Sheela is in the room, of course.

Would I like some watermelon before heading down the hill? I don’t know. Is it safe? I actually ask it this time. “You’ll have to take the risk,” says Sheela, and she laughs.