Attorneys for O. Gene Bicknell originally filed the lawsuit against three of his business partners in July 2025
Credit: American Heartland
NEED TO KNOW
- Richard M. Silanskas Jr. admitted to creating fake religious emails to manipulate investor O. Gene Bicknell, an investor in American Heartland Theme Park
- The emails, signed as “Sister Catherine,” aimed to convince Bicknell that God wanted him to fund the theme park
- The planned Oklahoma park was announced in 2023 and promised significant economic impact before the project collapsed amid the lawsuit
A businessman admitted to posing as God and other religious figures in messages sent to a 91-year-old investor to deceive him into providing millions of dollars in funding for American Heartland Theme Park.
Richard M. Silanskas Jr. confessed to sending messages to O. Gene Bicknell labeled with “Today’s Word” and frequently signed off as a nun named “Sister Catherine,” according to recent court documents filed in an Oklahoma court and obtained by PEOPLE. The messages were sent to make Bicknell believe that God was communicating with him, according to the documents.
The account emails were catherinesister909@yahoo.com, heavendirectword@gmail.com and others, per the documents. Court documents supporting the plaintiff’s motion to compel on Aug. 24 allege that “Silanskas boasts that in June he ‘chose to disclose information that he had previously withheld.’ ”
The documents were Bicknell’s support for a motion to compel Silanskas to provide “his cell phone and Google accounts, any electronic versions of the so-called ‘notes’ that he supposedly maintained regarding this dispute.”
“He made the ‘difficult decision’ to ‘tell the complete truth,’” the documents read. “By his own depiction, Silanskas decides for himself what information to withhold, when he feels comfortable revealing it, when he’ll lie, and when he’ll tell the truth.”
In the original lawsuit, attorneys for Bicknell named Silanskas and his former employees Richard Wilhite and Stephen Hedrick, a theme park designer who was reportedly involved in the project, according to KFOR.
The suit alleged Bicknell was subject to a “predatory conspiracy of psychological manipulation” to convince the businessman that “God himself was commanding” him to finance the park and to grant the defendants two-thirds ownership of the venture, PEOPLE previously reported.
The complaint claimed the project left “a trail of victims—foremost among them Gene Bicknell, as well as the citizenry of northeast Oklahoma, whose hopes for an economic renaissance caused by the American Heartland Theme Park were falsely raised and cruelly dashed.”
“They intentionally targeted Gene — a 90+-year-old who they knew was a devout Christian,” the original lawsuit alleged.
Elsewhere in the suit, attorneys accused the defendants of “impersonating Gene without his authorization” by signing documents in Bicknell’s name.
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Legal claims included two violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, civil conspiracy, fraud, deceit and intentional infliction of emotional distress — citing Bicknell’s “crippling stroke in July 2024.”
Plans for the headline-grabbing Oklahoma theme park were first announced in 2023 — and the park was set for an opening date in 2026.
The scale of the project was comparable to Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in Florida or Disneyland in California. According to a 2023 press release, the 125-acre “Americana-themed” park was meant to create about 4,000 jobs and make a substantial tourism and economic impact on the region.
Credit: American Heartland
Chris Davis, Wilhite’s attorney, said his client was “very surprised” by Silanskas’ admission of guilt in sending the fraudulent religious messages.
“Mr. Wilhite had no knowledge or understanding that it was Mr Silanskas behind the Today’s Word messages until the cell phone records began to be produced in this suit and for the first time when Mr. Silanskas testified in his deposition,” Davis said in a statement to KFOR. “The Wilhite’s are devastated by the events of the collapse of the project and the accusations against them in this lawsuit.”
Davis told the outlet that Wilhite had a working relationship with Bicknell and his family for 20 years.
Liz George, an attorney representing Hedrick, told KFOR that Silanskas’ testimony “confirms what the evidence in this case has shown throughout discovery– Steve Hedrick had nothing to do with the ‘Today’s Word’ or ‘Sister Catherine’ communications.
PEOPLE has reached out to attorneys for Bicknell and Wilhite.
Read the full article here
