What Lee Roy Floyd can't figure out is, why would the pastor of a church leave behind his wife and two kids and never contact them again?

"It's just mind-boggling," said Floyd, a janitor and 45-year Deacon Board member at Hessville Baptist Church. Pastor Don LaRose vanished 27 years ago after claiming he was in danger of being abducted by Satanists for a second time.

LaRose resurfaced Tuesday, admitting to newspaper reporters that he was going by the fake name Ken Williams and serving as mayor of Centerton, Ark. He'd also married again.

"I have a lot of questions for him," Floyd said Tuesday. "I always believed in him, and trusted him. It's very shocking to me. Why in the world hasn't he contacted his family and his dad?"

LaRose told The Times he has tried to keep up with his family over the years, several times driving by their houses, but never stopping in for fear of putting them in danger.

He claimed he fled Hammond after being threatened with a second abduction by a group of cultists, who said they would kill his family if he did not cooperate. So he fled.

LaRose said he could not go to Hammond police at the time, because New York police said he had fabricated the reports of his first abduction and had threatened to charge him with filing false reports.

LaRose said reporters from the Benton County Daily Record, which first uncovered the story, told him Tuesday his family members are "quite angry" and don't believe his story.

Asked what he would tell them, he said, "I really don't know what I would say. I would hope that they would understand that I was trying to save their lives."

Floyd said LaRose's former wife still lives in the region, and remarried seven years after the disappearance. When she recently learned that LaRose still might be alive, the shock of the news "threw her for a loop," Floyd said.

Floyd said LaRose also never contacted his two daughters, and that his disappearance has deeply affected them.

"They were teenagers when he left. That hurts. It's left its mark on them," Floyd said. "Why would you not contact your family?"