Part 15 of 15: The Ultimate Evil....Murder Reigned in Southern California...Death Mask

THE ULTIMATE EVIL
An Investigation into a
Dangerous Satanic Cult
By Maury Terry


24

Murder Reigned in 

Southern California 

By 1985, David Berkowitz's credibility and that of the prison informants was in good standing. And Manson II, as the Arlis Perry inquiry demonstrated, didn't lie to the New York cult when recounting that horrid tale. The Christine Freund setting was also bolstered solidly, and joined the innumerable other facts uncovered about the various cases since I began the tortuous journey in August 1977. With that background, and what we'd learned about Bill Mentzer, it would have been foolish to dismiss the claim about a real motive in the Tate murders. 

Many years had crawled by since those killings occurred, which made any investigation a difficult proposition. But the effort was important to the Son of Sam case and others we'd probed. All were said to be linked, and the discovery of a motive in the Tate murders would further cement the existence of the satanic network that operated between New York, Texas, California and the Dakotas. The evidence would reveal that the Manson case went far deeper than originally believed. 

There were two elements to work with: Was the allegation of a "hit" credible? And if so, what was the motive and for whom did Manson "volunteer" to commit the crimes? In this context the "why" of the killings also included Manson's own motivation—what did he stand to gain from his alleged voluntary enlistment? 

The Helter Skelter motive presented in court was based on Manson's theology, heavily inspired by Process teachings, that a wave of violence should sweep across the world to bring on "the end." In Manson's mind, Helter Skelter (the name came from a Beatles song Manson twisted) would ignite a black-white race war. By leaving suggestive clues at slaughter scenes, his disciples would deceive the establishment into blaming a radical group, such as the Black Panthers, for the crimes. The blacks would taste victory in the resulting war, but would founder trying to govern the new order. Then Charlie and the Family would emerge from hiding in the desert and assume command. 

Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi built an admirable case on that premise, and it is one I don't dispute completely. The prison informants amplified on Helter Skelter, contending there were at least two motives for the killings. Put another way, Manson was said to be a ticking bomb, and somebody knew it. That somebody then tossed the bomb into the right house—10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon, northwest of downtown Los Angeles. 

The Tate-La Bianca murders occurred on consecutive weekend nights, August 9 and 10, 1969. There were seven victims. Actress Sharon Tate, who was eight months pregnant; Roman Polanski's friend Wojtek Frykowski; coffee heiress Abigail Folger; prominent hairdresser Jay Sebring; and Steven Parent were slain shortly after midnight on Cielo Drive. 

Parent, eighteen, had been visiting young caretaker William Garretson who occupied the guest cottage on the rented Polanski property. He was shot dead by Charles (Tex) Watson, twenty-two, as his Rambler neared the exit gate. Inside the house, the others were shot, stabbed and beaten. 

Frykowski and Folger, his girlfriend, were chased from the home and died on the lawn. Sebring and Tate were killed in the living room; a length of rope around their necks bound them together. There is evidence that after the killers left someone—Manson and a companion—arrived at the house and tried to hang Sharon Tate and Sebring from the front porch, but were unsuccessful and dragged them back to the living room. 

Mastermind Manson—while not a participant—was convicted, as were the actual killers: Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Susan Atkins—who admitted tasting Tate's blood. 

The next night, in L.A.'s Los Feliz section, wealthy supermarket president Leno La Bianca, forty-four, and his wife, Rosemary, thirty-eight, were stabbed to death inside their home at 3301 Waverly Drive. Manson, who initially tied up the couple, was convicted here as well, along with actual killers Watson, Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten. 

After several months of investigation, the cases—which the  Tate detectives didn't link—broke when Atkins, in jail on another charge, talked to her cellmates, in a manner similar to Berkowitz's conversations with Vinny and Danny. To build its case against the others, the L.A. prosecution eventually granted immunity to Linda Kasabian, who was at both scenes but was not a killer. 

The police investigation of the murders—especially the Tate killings—left much to be desired, as Bugliosi pointed out in his book Helter Skelter. And it is the Tate murders to which the New York informants directed their comments. But there were a number of intriguing facts surrounding the La Bianca slayings, too. 

At the time of his death, Leno La Bianca, president of the Gateway Markets chain, was about $230,000 in debt—apparently a result of his addiction to horses. That is a motive for murder. La Bianca not only bet the ponies, he owned nine thoroughbreds. He had also served on the board of directors of a Hollywood bank police believed was Mafia-connected. Several of the bank's board members were convicted of fraudulent financial dealings. La Bianca, however, had no criminal record. Somewhere in that maze another motive may have lurked. 

His wife, Rosemary, had herself accumulated a considerable fortune by the time she died. Divorced and the mother of two young children, she had worked as a car hop and cocktail waitress to support herself. At the time of her 1959 marriage to Leno, she was a waitress at the Los Feliz Inn. However, she subsequently became a partner in a dress shop, Boutique Carriage, and put some cash into the stock market. A waitress in 1959, Rosemary La Bianca herself left an estate ten years later valued at $2,600,000—more than five million in 1986 dollars. It was, to put it mildly, a remarkable success story. 

In the weeks before the murders, there were problems in the La Bianca home. Rosemary told a neighbor the house was entered more than once while she and Leno were away on weekends. Their telephone was also bugged. Ed Sanders reported that a rare coin collection, possibly taken from the home, was later discovered in another house on Waverly; one said to be owned by a bookmaker, who abandoned the residence about a week after the murders. There was a concurrent story which held that one of Manson's top lieutenants, Bruce Davis, took a valuable collection of silver dollars to England about nine months before the killings. 

Davis did make the trip, and spent time with the Process in London, according to L.A. homicide sources. Whether or not he actually had the silver dollars is unknown, but Leno La Bianca was indeed an avid coin collector. 

Nonetheless, it was determined that the La Biancas were randomly slain by Manson's "children." But could the La Biancas have been under someone's scrutiny? Yes, they were. And it also remains possible that a connection to Manson lay somewhere in the abyss, for Manson was a career criminal and con man with a multitude of contacts on both sides of the Los Angeles tracks. 

Linda Kasabian testified that Manson had her drive indiscriminately around L.A. before specifically directing her to the La Bianca home on the night of the killings. The La Biancas, who purchased 3301 Waverly Drive from Leno's mother in 1968, lived next door to a home formerly occupied by friends of Manson. So Manson knew the layout of that house, 3267 Waverly. Yet he instead chose to enter the La Bianca home at 2 A.M. with the lights on and the couple still up; and he and Tex Watson did so without leaving any signs of a break-in. And then, without any indication of a struggle, they tied up the couple. Manson then left and instructed the others, who were waiting outside, to join Watson and kill them. 

Curiously, Leno La Bianca's boat, which was hitched to his car, was found on the street outside the house, not in the long, private driveway. A coin collection was in the car's trunk and Leno's wallet was in the glove compartment. On the street, the boat and car were almost inviting theft. 

It's not that Leno was careless; he was concerned about the boat and stored it in the garage of his mother's home. So its presence on the street—at a point beyond his driveway—was unusual. Also, water skis were removed from the boat that night; they were found behind the house, leaning on the fender of Rosemary's own car. Is it reasonable to have been worried enough about water skis to lug them at least forty yards up the driveway to the house while leaving behind in plain view a boat hitched to a year-old Thunderbird? 

Then, too, Leno was slain in his pajamas while Rosemary was found wearing one of her favorite expensive dresses over a pair of "shorty" pajamas. She hadn't worn it earlier in the evening—the couple had just returned from a casual day at Lake Isabella. Manson has said he told her to put the dress on, but the combination of Rosemary's attire and the boat and car in the street may signify that Rosemary went out alone shortly before the murders and didn't want to pull the rig into the long driveway, which was Leno's task, when she returned. The wallet and coins might have been left in the car because the auto and boat were parked in the driveway when the couple arrived home about an hour before the killings. If Rosemary went out, she may have used the T-Bird or backed that car and the boat from the driveway and used her own vehicle, which was parked behind the house. Her keys and house keys were reportedly found in the ignition of her unlocked car; another enigma. Rosemary had been concerned about the house being entered. Would she have gone to Lake Isabella leaving her house keys and car keys in plain view in an unlocked vehicle? Or had she actually just driven the car right before the murders and upon her return left them behind for some reason? 

Combined with the absence of signs of a break-in or a struggle inside the house, it is conceivable that such events occurred. If so, and combined with the other puzzling factors, they would indicate a possible connection between Manson and the La Biancas. If one existed, it probably was in the narcotics area. But police reportedly found no evidence of such activity on the part of either victim. However, a Los Angeles source told me in early 1987 that Rosemary La Bianca was indeed involved in LSD dealing. The statement has not yet been corroborated. 

Putting aside a potential link to Manson, the La Biancas may have been killed in a "cover crime"—to use Vinny's term about cult MO in New York—intended to divert police attention from real motives the night before on Cielo Drive. 

At both residences—and at the home of musician Gary Hinman, a Manson acquaintance slain July 27 over what Manson later admitted was a botched dope deal—common elements appeared, among them variations of the word "pig" written in blood. There was no attempt by the killers to disassociate the crimes. 

Does that fact tend to bolster the Helter Skelter motive and discount the charge of real motive on Cielo Drive? No, it doesn't. Because if Helter Skelter was the only reason for Tate-La Bianca, why did the notorious public murders stop after the La Bianca slayings? Two consecutive nights and Manson's master plan was terminated? Tex Watson split for Texas, Patricia Krenwinkel for Alabama and Kasabian for New Hampshire. 

Why didn't they do it again and again in just such a vicious, publicity-garnering manner? They didn't. Manson moved his minions deep into the desert. 

"Manson," Vinny wrote from Dannemora, "was a puppet." 

The questions about the short-lived Helter Skelter are significant, and so is the fact that Manson crimes in the summer of '69 were not motiveless: Hinman, killed over dope; Bernard Crowe, a black dope dealer wounded by Manson over a drug burn; Donald (Shorty) Shea, a hand at the Spahn movie ranch, where the clan lived, slain because he had knowledge of Tate-La Bianca; and the Tate slayings themselves, for which we'd soon discover a motive. 

In that context, it would appear that there may also have been a real motive for the La Bianca murders as well. But if not, it is almost certain that they were killed to confuse the issue of legitimate motive on Cielo Drive. It should be remembered that Manson did believe in Helter Skelter, so he had his own reasons for directing the butchery, even if his marching orders were issued elsewhere. 

Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, hampered by inefficient detective work on the Tate killings particularly, acknowledged that he only went with the Helter Skelter motive in court because the police investigation failed to unearth another. Maybe they didn't look hard enough. 

To find another reason for the Cielo Drive slayings, one has to search through the original police investigation and the extended social and narcotics circle populated by both Manson and the residents of the Tate house. 

At the beginning, Los Angeles authorities focused on drugs as the impetus for the killings. And four of the LAPD's top suspects were none other than people tied closely to Mama Cass Elliot and her crowd. To the best of our knowledge, Roy Radin and Manson II suspect Bill Mentzer wasn't among them, but the fact is that these four men were prime targets during the investigation's first month. All were cleared of direct complicity when they provided alibis and passed polygraph tests. One, however, was tested twice. 

The four, who were known to police and others as reputed drug dealers, were frequent guests at Cielo Drive while Frykowski and Folger house-sat for the Polanski's from April 1, 1969, until the night of the murders. And even after Sharon Tate returned from abroad in mid-July, the visits continued. One of the men acknowledged being in the house twice during the week of the murders—including the day before they occurred. 

One of Cass's entourage, Pic Dawson, the jet-setting son of a State Department official, actually lived in Frykowski's home when he and Abigail relocated to Cielo Drive. 

As friends of Frykowski, Dawson, Ben Carruthers, Tom Harrigan and Billy Doyle crashed Roman Polanski's housewarming party at 10050 Cielo in mid-March 1969 and were ejected after a scuffle. They weren't happy about that. But after the Polanski's left for Europe their visits resumed, at Frykowski's invitation. 

Billy Doyle, who was close to Mama Cass, also knew Roy Radin suspect Bill Mentzer, said a Los Angeles source who was acquainted with both men. "I was in the same room with them. They were part of the same scene; they know each other," the informant reported. So Mentzer not only knew one of the Tate victims—Folger—he also knew Billy Doyle, according to the source. 

We were getting ever closer to Manson II and the hidden secrets of the Cielo Drive nightmare. 

According to police reports, friends of Frykowski and our own sources, Frykowski became involved in LSD dealing and also was offered a wholesale distributorship of the amphetamine MDA—which was found in both his and Folger's systems the night they died. 

Frykowski, a recent immigrant to the United States, didn't have the money to make wholesale drug purchases; he was unemployed. This was a subtlety the police apparently missed. But his girlfriend had the funds. Coffee heiress Abigail Folger had the cash to support Frykowski's endeavor, and our sources say she did just that. 

"Folger was backing Frykowski in the drug business," said the former FBI operative, who knew Folger personally. "And your guy Mentzer got around in that scene all the time. It was what they were all into." 

As so often happens in narcotics merchandising, friction sparked a feud between Frykowski and the suppliers, and a member of Cass's crowd pulled a gun and threatened Frykowski's life not long before the murders. Additionally, one individual from this same group became incensed when, also shortly before the killings, Frykowski threw him out of his Woodstock Road address. The eviction occurred because this friend of Cass's allegedly choked Wojtek's friend, artist Witold Kaczankowski (Witold K.), who was temporarily living in the house while Wojtek and Folger were residing at Cielo Drive. 

Frykowski, some said, got in way over his head without even recognizing that he was careening toward white water. Four from the Cass group were later turned in as suspects in the Tate murders by associates of both Frykowski and Mama Cass —including John Phillips, Witold K. and gossip columnist Steve Brandt. 

But it would be misleading to limit these men to Mama Cass. They were known to others in the social network, too. And there is no telling exactly how far and in what directions the drug pipeline extended. 

And now, into the week of the murders. As stated, one of Cass's friends visited the Cielo Drive house twice and was introduced there to Sharon Tate the day before the killings. Frykowski also received a new MDA shipment that week, and was concurrently said to be "in the midst of a ten-day mescaline experiment." 

John Phillips said in 1986 that Frykowski showed up at his Bel Air Drive home during those final days and demanded to be let in. Phillips said that he turned Wojtek away because he seemed incoherent. So the purpose of the unexpected visit remains unexplained. 

Also that week, Ed Sanders reported, a large party was held on Cielo Drive at which Billy Doyle, acquaintance of Bill Mentzer, was allegedly whipped as the result of a dope burn involving about $2,000 worth of cocaine which was perpetrated on Jay Sebring, who was present at the affair. 

Investigating, Sanders heard only silence from those said to have attended the party, whose roster apparently included John Phillips. But actor Dennis Hopper, quoted by an L.A. newspaper, did comment publicly on the matter: "They had fallen into sadism and masochism and bestiality—and they recorded it all on videotape, too. The L.A. police told me this. I know that three days before they were killed twenty-five people were invited to that house for a mass-whipping of a dealer from Sunset Strip who'd given them bad dope."  

The party was held to honor French film director Roger Vadim, who was then married to actress and anti-war activist Jane Fonda. But at what point in the proceedings the alleged whipping-taping occurred is unknown. However, Sanders reported that Sebring did bring undeveloped film to a photo lab on Wednesday, August 6, and the Polanski maid was off the night before. The party, then, apparently occurred on Tuesday night, the fifth. 

On the night of the killings, as noted previously, a man named Joel Rostau, the boyfriend of an employee of Sebring's, delivered some drugs to 10050 Cielo Drive. Rostau would be murdered in New York about fifteen months later, and another of Sebring's associates would be slain in Florida about a month after that. 

The name of that game was narcotics, not Helter Skelter. 

And then there was the subject of witchcraft, black hoods and leather aprons. While it should be recalled that Frykowski and Folger were in temporary residence at Cielo Drive, it is known that British warlock Alex Saunders, who participated in a film Sharon Tate shot in England before her marriage, said he initiated Sharon into witchcraft. 

Saunders, who said he studied under master black magician Aleister Crowley himself, was connected to OTO and other cult activity in Britain. It is not known if he was involved with the Process there. But Alex Saunders said he possessed photos of Sharon standing inside a ritual magic circle. 

Police denied that black hoods and leather aprons were found in the loft above the living room at 10050 Cielo Drive. However, Ed Sanders told me in July 1985 that FBI sources informed him those items were indeed there—along with "an inverted ace of spades," said to be a form of cultic life sign. Doris Tate, Sharon's mother, also said that a white cape was found in the house. 

Thus, there appears to have been no lack of real motives to supplement Helter Skelter, ranging from dope to revenge to occult-related matters. There was no evidence to demonstrate the New York prison informants were wrong—and I don't think they were. 

Manson himself has alleged that the "true" motive remains secret, that a major scandal would erupt if it was revealed. Various members of his Family have echoed those sentiments. Among them are: Venice, California, biker Danny De Carlo,  whom Sanders said police linked to a Process offshoot in Santa Barbara; convicted Gary Hinman killer Bobby Beausoleil, who had been affiliated with a San Francisco Satan cult; Catherine (Gypsy) Share; Vern Plumlee; and others. Most have ascribed the motive to a dope burn. 

In a 1987 interview with an associate of mine, Manson added a twist to the narcotics motive. "Don't you think those people deserved to die—they were involved in kiddie porn," he alleged, but didn't say just who in the Tate-La Bianca cases he was referring to. 

Another source close to Manson told Sanders that a "real millionaire" friend of Manson's, whose large black car Manson wrecked around the time of the murders, was involved. This source added that an $11,000 LSD burn was in the picture. The millionaire's name wasn't revealed to Sanders, but the information narrowed the field. And there are several reasons to believe the statement had a basis in fact. One of those is an incident which occurred just two nights after the La Bianca slayings. 

At approximately 1 A.M. on August 12, Manson arrived at the home of a friend, Melba Kronkite, who lived in the Malibu area. Manson asked Kronkite for $825 to bail out follower Mary Brunner, who'd been jailed several days before on a stolen credit card charge. Melba couldn't provide the cash, and watched as an angry Manson drove off behind the wheel of a large black car, apparently the same one referred to by Sanders' source. 

The "millionaire" allegation also blended with Manson's reference to a major scandal—as does a mysterious trip he made, which will be discussed shortly. 

Vern Plumlee told a reporter that the killers went to Cielo Drive to get dope purveyor Frykowski and anyone else present. This comment is both logical and supportable. It may also mesh with the millionaire-LSD burn information because Frykowski, as Roman Polanski's friend, was traveling in some select circles. 

Beyond that, Frykowski emerges as a likely target by process of elimination. The pregnant Sharon Tate, who was overseas during four of the five previous months, would be an unlikely candidate. Abigail Folger likewise, to an extent. She was a shadow of the controlling Frykowski, who primed her narcotics usage, and, the sources say, she was also financing his dope distribution enterprise. On the surface, Jay Sebring 598 Web of Conspiracy may have appeared to be a plausible intended target. His cocaine habit was known to friends, and police learned of it soon after his death. 

But Sebring was a client rather than a dealer, and he didn't live at Cielo Drive. While a frequent visitor, he usually slept at home, where he was into a mild bondage scene with willing female partners whom he'd tie up and photograph before culminating the sex act. Moreover, although Sebring's intent to visit the Tate house that final night was known by some in the crowd, there wouldn't appear to have been any guarantee that he'd still be there at about 12:20 A.M., when the killers arrived, since he was scheduled to fly to San Francisco the next day and may well have intended to go home earlier. 

A Los Angeles source who was knowledgeable about the Manson set in 1969 said: "Frykowski was the motive. He had stung his own suppliers for a fair amount of money and that didn't go down well at all with the people at the top of the drug scene here. And to make it worse, he was upsetting the structure of the LSD marketplace by dealing independently, outside the established chain of supply. He was a renegade." 

The source knew Abigail Folger and others in the circle. 

The "fair amount" of money the source described may have been the $11,000 Sanders reported, but my informant said the total sum was "probably a lot higher." 

However, the source confirmed the relevance of the black car Manson was seen driving two days after the murders. According to information we uncovered, the black car apparently was a Mercedes-Benz that was owned by a wealthy individual who lived part-time in Berkeley, California, during the Manson era. Sources say that the car owner, whom I will call Chris Jetz, was a narcotics "middleman" who distributed hallucinogenic drugs from secret LSD and MDA laboratories to dropoff points for pickup by elements of the Hell's Angels biker gang, who controlled most of the street-level distribution of chemical narcotics in the L.A. area at the time. 

The source's name and Jetz's real name have been turned over to authorities. And the biker connection, from the Process and Manson to the New York prison statements, had now appeared several times during the overall investigation. 

Sources also said that Jetz had ties, in the form of funding, to the upscale, self-awareness Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.

The Los Angeles drug scene in 1969 could be likened to a field of pyramids which roughly divided the marketplace into various specialized segments. Near the top of one pyramid, the chemical dope edifice, was a man connected to Jetz; a superior, so to speak. This man was said to have been a former Israeli who had strong links to the international intelligence community. He wasn't employed by U.S. or Israeli intelligence, at least not at the time of the murders. Rather, he was regarded as a rogue who, in addition to his elevated narcotics ranking, was suspected by some of being an operative for the Soviet Union; perhaps free-lance. 

This information, which I unearthed in 1986, apparently explained something Ed Sanders earlier told me: "There were so many investigations going on out there after the murders that I began to wonder if the Process was a front for some intelligence operation." 

Sanders said that the FBI, Israeli intelligence, the California Beverage Control Board, the Los Angeles DA's office, as well as the LAPD and the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, all mounted probes of the Tate murders, with the Treasury Department involved peripherally. And those were the ones he knew about. 

Whatever clandestine bonds may have existed on top of Dope Mountain, the inquiry we conducted resulted in the determination that Frykowski was the primary target, with Folger secondary, and that LSD dealing and market control was the principal motive. 

Mansonite Vern Plumlee added an intriguing gem to his own Frykowski comment: he said the killers had received information that Sharon Tate wasn't supposed to be home that night. Interestingly, it appears that Sharon did plan to spend the evening at the home of a girlfriend, Sheilah Welles, but then changed her mind. 

But if Manson in fact received that tip it could only have emanated from a handful of people—those who, directly or indirectly, were in contact with Sharon, Jay Sebring, Folger or Frykowski within forty-eight hours of the murders. 

And one of them would have wanted people dead on Cielo Drive. 

Could Manson himself have known any of Mama Cass's crowd, others in the extended group, or even one of the victims? The prosecution and police didn't pursue this angle successfully, but the answer is decidedly yes. 

Manson Family associate Charles Melton said: "I've heard that Charlie used to go down to Mama Cass's place and they were all sitting around and she'd bring out the food. Squeaky [Fromme, who later tried to shoot President Gerald Ford] and Gypsy [Catherine Share] were down there. Everyone would jam and have fun and eat." 

Manson also was closely linked to record and TV producer Terry Melcher; his young assistant, Gregg Jakobson; and Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson. 

Wilson and Melcher were good friends of John Phillips, and Cass was associated with Bill Mentzer, among others. Phillips said that Melcher and Wilson frequently tried to interest him in Manson's music and philosophy. Talent manager Rudy Altobelli, the actual owner of 10050 Cielo Drive, testified at Manson's trial that Melcher and Jakobson often praised Manson to him. 

But whereas Altobelli and Phillips said they declined these suggestions, Sanders reported that Manson's bus was observed parked at Phillips' Bel Air home in the autumn of 1968, and that Manson apparently also attended a 1968 New Year's Eve party there. 

Whether or not this was so, the links between Manson, Wilson, Cass, Phillips, Melcher and Jakobson are evident. 

The Manson-Melcher relationship was instigated by Dennis Wilson. In the summer of 1968 he introduced Manson to Melcher and Jakobson while Charlie and some followers were in residence at Wilson's Sunset Boulevard estate. Wilson paid dearly for his hospitable attitude: the Family scrounged him out of considerable money and wrecked one of his cars. One of the Beach Boys' gold records ended up at the Spahn movie ranch. 

But Wilson, Jakobson and Melcher were in tune with Charlie Manson, and a Manson song, rewritten by the Beach Boys, was released as a Beach Boys' flip side in December 1968. The "A" side was a remake of Ersel Hickey's "Bluebirds Over the Mountain," and Manson's backing tune was originally titled— honestly—"Cease to Exist." But the group changed those words to "cease to resist" and added a new title, "Never Learn Not to Love," which wasn't quite what Manson had in mind. 

In the spring of 1969, Wilson told a British rock magazine that the Beach Boys might release a Manson album. He called Manson "the Wizard." 

During the 1968 "Cease to Exist" period, Terry Melcher was living with actress Candice Bergen in the future death house, 10050 Cielo Drive. And Tex Watson and Manson follower Dean Moorehouse were said to have passed a lot of hours at that residence during that summer of '68. In fact, Moorehouse actually lived in the house, with Melcher's concurrence, after Melcher moved to Malibu and before his subtenants, the Polanskis, occupied the premises on February 15, 1969. 

Moorehouse provides a curious twist to this story. The middle-aged former minister moved to California in 1965 from North Dakota. He was a native of Minot, of all places, went to college there and worked several jobs in the city before finding God. He then headed congregations in two North Dakota towns, one of which was near both Bismarck and Minot. In light of the Arlis Perry scenario in Bismarck and other doings in Minot, these links are provocative. Though he was gone from North Dakota by the seventies, it is certain native son Dean Moorehouse had contacts there. 

Dean's daughter, Ruth Ann (Ouisch), was herself a hardcore Manson follower to the end. Though barely seventeen, Ruth Ann was no shrinking violet: she was implicated in the attempted murder of defector Barbara Hoyt. Ouisch fed her an LSD-laced hamburger in Honolulu, where Hoyt had gone to hide during the Manson trial. 

After Manson's arrest, a number of his society contacts, not surprisingly, tried to downplay their interaction with him. Among them was Terry Melcher, who had a show business image to consider. But, Sanders reported, Melcher's relationship with Manson was more extensive than generally believed. For instance, Sanders wrote that Manson and others in the Family occasionally borrowed Melcher's car and were given permission to use his credit card while on the road. It was love and flowers in those early days. 

In addition, Manson became quite friendly with a young divorcee, Charlene Cafritz, who was a close friend of Melcher confidant Alan Warnecke. Like Melcher, Cafritz was a person with considerable wealth. She also was a friend of Sharon Tate, and attended her funeral. 

Manson met Cafritz at Dennis Wilson's beach house in 1968. Later, Charlie and three of his female followers visited, at Cafritz's expense, a luxury resort in Reno, Nevada, where she was staying. While in Reno, in December 1968, Cafritz— who was awaiting a divorce settlement there which would net her about $2 million—tried to buy Manson a Cadillac, Sanders reported. Interestingly, she was also said to have purchased a number of thoroughbred horses, which were then resold or given away. 

In Reno, Charlene Cafritz took a series of private films of Manson and the girls. The whereabouts of these perhaps sensual epics is unknown. But the Cafritz connection, which some close to the Manson case consider a "good lead" for anyone interested in following through on the investigation, is now minus Charlene herself. She died about two years later of an overdose. 

Moving forward to the summer of slaughter: Terry Melcher and Gregg Jakobson visited Manson at the Spahn ranch on June 3. Earlier, Jakobson and Dennis Wilson recorded Manson for an album audition but Melcher, who sat in on the session, wasn't too impressed. The music business was career goal number one for Manson, who wasn't thrilled that Melcher was lagging on the deal. A certain animosity was brewing. 

But now the talk was of a documentary film which would depict the daily life of the Family. Stills and tapes for a presentation were already shot. Manson, however, wanted machetes and gore, whereas the others sought to portray the soft side of communal living, then in vogue in America. 

Melcher had previously come to the ranch on May 18, when he listened to Charlie and the girls sing. He'd heard better. But he returned on June 3 with Jakobson and sound engineer Mike Deasy, who had a rolling recording studio in his van. 

Melcher was also accompanied by a young starlet named either Shara or Sharon who'd apparently been to Spahn before, wearing wigs to disguise her identity. While at the ranch, Manson and Melcher got into a heated argument as Jakobson and the starlet stood by. Its origin was unknown, but it apparently concerned the focus of the film. 

Mansonite Edward (Sunshine) Pierce saw them arguing but was unable to overhear any particulars. However, about thirty minutes later he knew something was up. Manson walked over to Pierce, pledged him to secrecy and asked if he'd help murder somebody. 

"He said he had one person in particular he wanted me to help him kill and said there might have to be some other people killed," Pierce later said. "He said he could probably round up maybe five thousand dollars or more and give it to me if I helped him pull this job." 

Manson didn't name anybody, but Pierce had some clouded insight into why Charlie wanted to accomplish the crime(s). Paraphrasing Manson, Pierce said: "If you ever want to get anything and you want it bad enough, you can't let anybody come between you when you are going to do something." 

Pierce believed Manson was serious, so he called his family in Texas and they wired money to him. Sunshine Pierce flew home the next day. 

Both Jakobson and Melcher were familiar with Manson's philosophies. Jakobson, for instance, told prosecutor Bugliosi that over the course of the year preceding the murders, he had a hundred hours of in-depth conversations with Manson. 

It is somewhat perplexing that neither Wilson, Jakobson nor Melcher thought of Manson immediately after the carnage at Melcher's former residence. In any event, they didn't call the police. But perhaps they were frightened or simply didn't make the connection. 

Melcher, for example, professed great fear of Manson during the trial, asking if he could testify through a loudspeaker in a side room rather than face Charlie head on. The request was denied. But, as it turned out, he needn't have worried. Manson's defense attorney didn't cross-examine Melcher. Prosecutor Bugliosi said that this strategy was "probably at Manson's request." 

Also, Paul Fitzgerald, first Manson's attorney and later the representative of Patricia Krenwinkel, announced to the press that John Phillips and Mama Cass would be called as defense witnesses. But for some reason plans were changed, and the two former members of the Mamas and the Papas never took the stand. 

As noted, various motives for the killings were evident both on and beneath the surface. Pertinent activities at Cielo Drive immediately prior to the murders have also been discussed, but Manson's own actions just before and after the slayings may provide an important piece of the puzzle. 

After having been around L.A. all summer, Manson left town early on Sunday morning, August 3, just days before the murders. After purchasing gas at a station in nearby Canoga Park, he made a beeline for the coast and Highway 1. Up the coastline he drove, heading for Big Sur, about three hundred miles away. 

The following morning, at about four o'clock, he picked up Stephanie Schram, a seventeen-year-old hitchhiker, at a gas station somewhat south of Big Sur, apparently in Gorda. Where Manson was earlier in the day isn't known for certain, but he may have been at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur—a well-known sensitivity center whose seminars attracted affluent knowledge seekers of the day. Its sessions were hosted by philosophers, psychiatrists, meditation proponents—and even prominent Satanists. Robert DeGrimston, head of the Process, reportedly lectured there. 

But if Manson wasn't positively placed at Esalen on August-3, he indeed was two nights later. Schram, who stayed with Manson and was initiated to LSD by him, told prosecutors that Manson left her outside Esalen in his truck, took his guitar and went inside. When she awoke in the morning, he was back. And, she said, his mood wasn't good. It was now August 6, about sixty-six hours from murder. 

Why was Manson at Esalen? There is no clear answer. He'd told some followers at the Spahn ranch that he was heading north to look for new recruits. He later told another associate, Paul Watkins, that he played his guitar for top people at Esalen who rejected his music. 

It is also quite possible that he was there for a reason which involved chemical narcotics dealer Chris Jetz, who sources say provided a degree of financial backing for Esalen. However, Esalen officials refused to acknowledge Manson's presence there. 

Big Sur isn't far from Santa Cruz, home of Chingon cult activity. And when Manson picked up Stephanie south of Big Sur at 4 A.M. on August 4, he had two male companions with him. Stephanie testified that these unidentified men were hitchhikers who soon left the truck. At least that's what she thought they were. 

Regardless, Manson and Stephanie drove south from Big Sur on August 6, stopped overnight at the Spahn ranch outside L.A. and then drove to the home of Stephanie's married sister in San Diego on the seventh. That night, Manson frightened the sister by predicting: "People are going to be slaughtered. They'll be lying on their lawns dead." And within thirty hours, they indeed would be. 

Was Manson's alleged rejection at Esalen the final straw, compounded by his learning on August 8 that Bobby Beausoleil had been bagged for the Hinman murder? It is impossible to say with certainty. Manson was the only source for what happened at the institute. If he'd been there for another reason, he wasn't likely to inform stranger Stephanie or Paul Watkins, who was not considered part of the insider murder machine. 

But the New York informants hadn't said Manson lacked his own reasons for committing the crimes. The point made was that someone took advantage of Manson's madness and guided him to Cielo Drive. 

In that sense, whether Manson was spurned at Esalen is irrelevant. It's only if he wasn't that matters. 

After the killings, Manson's actions indicate that if he was under orders on the murders, it wasn't in exchange for money. He first showed up at Dennis Wilson's house with Stephanie. Wilson later said Manson wanted $1,500 so he could get out to the desert. So much for Helter Skelter. It was at this time, Stephanie testified, that Wilson told Manson the police had questioned him about someone who'd been shot in the stomach. This was Bernard (Lotsa Poppa) Crowe, a black dope dealer who lived near Mama Cass. Manson had wounded him July 1 over a marijuana burn, and one of Wilson's friends was there at the time. Wilson turned down Manson's request for money, and Charlie then issued a veiled threat against Wilson's son. 

Charlie also sought out Gregg Jakobson, and was again unsuccessful in his quest for cash. He handed Jakobson, of all things, a .44 bullet and advised him to tell Wilson there were more where that one came from. Manson also dropped in on Melba Kronkite in the Malibu area driving the big black car and seeking bail money for Mary Brunner. Whoever else Manson may have called on is unknown. 

Arrested on other charges on October 12, Manson never left jail again. Susan Atkins talked in prison, and the case broke in December. 

The preceding scenario isn't intended to be the final word on the relevant issues of the Manson case. My interest in it was based on the alleged relationship between Manson II and the original Charlie; and in the charge that Manson, said to be a member of the Son of Sam "umbrella" cult organization, acted on the request of another. Bill Mentzer's appearance in the web added more impetus to search through the haze of sixteen years. 

Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi was faced with a difficult endeavor as it was. He proved that Manson, although not a direct participant, had ordered the Tate-La Bianca killings. The idea of picking through that puzzle to see who may have pulled Manson's strings—and why—would have been beyond a reasonable expectation at that time. 

But the biggest connection was one missed by authorities, and that link fused other bombshells which also evaded the police and the district attorney's office. 

The summer of love, 1967, in San Francisco. Throughout the United States, flower power reigned but San Francisco was Mecca. In a song written by his close friend John Phillips, Scott McKenzie advised people coming to the city by the bay to wear flowers in their hair because "summertime will be a love-in there." Eric Burdon of the Animals sang about warm "San Franciscan Nights." The hometown Jefferson Airplane wanted "Somebody to Love" and told about Alice when she was ten feet tall in the acid-laced "White Rabbit." 

It was Haight-Ashbury, the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Monterey festival, drugs, sex, Vietnam War resistance and hippiedom. It was the summer the Beatles' "Sergeant Pepper" marched into the United States dropping hints about sugar-cube highs and The Doors' "Light My Fire" rocketed to number one. It was also the era when Charles Manson met up with the Process. 

And the time when he first met one of the eventual Tate victims. 

Vincent Bugliosi suspected Manson had contact with the Process in San Francisco. But the prosecution didn't pursue that suspicion. Similarly, the district attorney's office said it sought but was unable to find a link between Manson and a Cielo Drive victim, which would have significantly altered the perception of the case. 

But we learned that Charlie and Abigail Folger were friends for a time in San Francisco and that Manson hooked up with the Process there as well. 

The Folger information comes from a reliable informant who knew both Folger and Manson. The source said he had dinner one night in September 1967 with Manson, Folger and two other individuals at a small seafood restaurant near Golden Gate Park, not far from the Haight. 

One of the others at the table was an aspiring actor and stuntman named Donald (Shorty) Shea. He later headed south to Los Angeles and found work at the Spahn movie ranch. 

Shorty Shea was murdered by the Family in the fallout from the Tate-La Bianca slayings, allegedly because he knew too much. 

He indeed did. Unknown by the police and prosecution, Shea had known Manson and Folger in San Francisco two years before the murders and actually went down to L.A. in Manson's company, according to the source. This revelation also seriously impacts the case. Two people seated in that seafood restaurant that night in 1967 were later murdered on the instructions of a third. 

The source's statement—which was supported by that of another California informant who said Shea also knew Bill Mentzer's associates—destroys Helter Skelter as the only motive for the slayings and clearly demonstrates there were other factors involved. The New York informants had hit the target again. 

Ed Sanders had heard that Manson attended a fund-raising event in San Francisco that was chaired by Abigail Folger's mother. He also knew that in 1967 Manson met disciple Mary Brunner at the University of California, Berkeley, where Brunner worked in the library and Folger at the university's art museum. And he had received information that Manson met Folger at Mama Cass's home. But Sanders wasn't able to flesh out the Folger connection. We were. 

"Gibby had more money than she knew what to do with," the source states. "She was into finding herself and new directions, and she was always investing in things, including a surfboard shop in Encinitas [near San Diego]. And not long before the murders, about six weeks, she got involved in putting up some cash for a small recording studio. It's possible that Terry Melcher, who knew Manson well, had a link into that studio." This was another twist; Melcher wasn't believed to have been associated with Folger, but the source says he might have been. 

"That night in San Francisco, she loaned ten grand to a 608 Web of Conspiracy small theater," the informant continues. "And she had also given money to Charlie from time to time." 

But then she stopped. 

"Manson turned against her when she refused to lay out any more bucks for him, and also because she wouldn't come across for him sexually. Charlie wanted to make it with her, but she shot him down." 

So Charles Manson, who would soon orchestrate orgies and command sex at will from his young followers, was spurned by Abigail Folger. Add another item to Charlie's own list of reasons for willingness to oversee butchery on Cielo Drive. 

"It made sense that Shea was killed after that," the contact says. "He knew both of them, and he could tie things together that nobody wanted tied." 

From another informant, it was learned that the $10,000 Folger agreed to advance that 1967 night was to help out a San Francisco arts house known as the Straight Theater, which was located on the corner of Haight Street and Cole. Not coincidentally, Manson lived at 636 Cole during this period, and the Process was ensconced at No. 407 on that block. 

On September 21, 1967, a rock group called the Magick Powerhouse of Oz (with the word "magic" deliberately spelled with Aleister Crowley's k on the end) played the Straight Theater to celebrate something occultish known as the "equinox of the gods," September 21 being the first day of autumn. 

Lead guitarist and sitar player for the Powerhouse was none other than Bobby Beausoleil, who became a Mansonite and participated in the 1969 Gary Hinman murder. Manson, Folger, the Straight Theater and Beausoleil; the connections are fascinating. 

Beausoleil was tightly woven to author and bizarre-film maker Kenneth Anger, who was into the biker mystique and later conducted a magic ritual involving a satanic pentagram during an October 1967 march on the Pentagon. Anger was in the process of filming an occult movie that autumn; it was called Lucifer Rising. Beausoleil, twenty, played the part of Lucifer in the picture and his group was to perform the movie's music, such as it was. So, Sanders reported, Anger was present at the Straight Theater that night to film the soiree. 

Following the path a step further: Anger, LSD guru Timothy Leary and others were involved in the formation of the Himalayan Academy, which a source described to me as "a new-age research foundation of altered states of consciousness." The academy was stocked with various types of expensive equipment, such as oscilloscopes and electronic measuring devices. It was a mind-bending experiment of the first kind. 

Sources say the academy was comprised of at least fifty members, plus another hundred or so hangers-on. There was considerable wealth on the academy's roster of sympathizers, and informants report that Abigail Folger contributed money here as well. Folger had also attended sessions at Esalen, which was neither geographically nor philosophically far from the Himalayan Academy. 

In fact, Folger may have been at Esalen on August 2 or 3, 1969, just before Manson arrived there. A phone call, probably made by Folger, was placed to Esalen from 10050 Cielo Drive on July 30, the Wednesday before the weekend of August 2-3. If Folger went to Esalen, her reason may have been simply to attend a sensitivity seminar, or it may have been related to other matters connected to the oncoming murders. However, no one has discovered if she even visited the facility at that time. But she was not in Los Angeles. Sanders reported that Frykowski entertained another young lady at Cielo Drive that Friday night, demonstrating that Abigail was away. 

Regardless, the sources say that Folger put some capital into the Himalayan Academy—and that Charlie Manson was also connected to the society. 

"Folger donated to the place, and it was there that Manson was first exposed to the Process," an informant says. "The academy was into all sorts of things and the Process was invited to speak there. That's how it happened." 

The source didn't know if Folger was associated with the cult. But according to the informant, Manson joined the cult and later convened with the group in Mill Valley and at a dwelling in San Anselmo occupied by a well-known personage aligned with the LSD scene. Both cities are in the Bay Area. 

This scenario raised an inevitable question. Los Angeles sources earlier said that Roy Radin/Manson II suspect Bill Mentzer frequently traveled to the San Francisco area, the Stanford campus in Palo Alto, and stipulated that he knew Abigail Folger. 

"Mentzer knew Manson and all the cult people," the other informant said. 

Another crucial piece of the puzzle apparently was now in place.

And what about the relationship between Manson and the doomed Shorty Shea? 

"They knew each other well enough in San Francisco to travel up to Seattle together to visit a commune started there by Brother Love Israel," said the informant, who dined with them. "They were tight long before the Spahn ranch and the murders." 

Authorities had placed Manson in Seattle, but they apparently didn't know why he was there—or whom he was with. 

From Son of Sam in New York to the plains of North Dakota. From a Bible in Caswell Canyon to Benedict Canyon in 1969. And from the grizzled faces of prisoners in maximum security jails in New York to the mellowed-out summer of love in San Francisco in '67. The journey was almost completed. 

So what happened at Cielo Drive? Like Ed Sanders, I believe a dope burn was the primary motive, and the evidence supports that conclusion. It is also apparent that Manson harbored animosity toward Abigail Folger. And I believe Manson's own race war fantasy, fed by cult mentors, was another component. There may be more. But several things seem very clear. For one, no lower-rung dope purveyor could have ordered the killings. Because of the intense heat such public and celebrity murders generate, approval would have come from on high, although the grudge itself may have originated lower on the ladder. 

Manson didn't commit the Tate-La Bianca murders for financial rewards. Was his own Helter Skelter motivation enough for him to accept the assignment? It's possible, but very doubtful. As unglued as Charlie became, he was still a jail-hardened, street-smart, smooth operator. I, and others who assisted the 1985-86 Manson probe, believe that Manson stood to gain something beyond fulfillment of Helter Skelter or a modicum of revenge against Folger; something that mattered to him personally. 

A jailed Manson killer whom I interviewed in early 1987 agreed that, "Charlie never did anything that didn't benefit Charlie, himself. I think he used 'Helter Skelter' to turn us on. There had to be another motive for the killings, and he was going to get something for himself out of it." 

What that something was cannot be said with certainty, although suspicion abounds. But it might be beneficial to envision that chemical drug pyramid. Perhaps there was someone in it who knew of Manson's volatile mind-set. Someone who, as part of that pyramid's structure, could have agreed to offer Manson something he wanted as a favor to those ranked higher. That remains to be proven. 

Manson, certainly, was a member of a secret satanic cult. All the evidence and source information points to that, and it is an evaluation I share with others, including Sanders. Bugliosi himself stopped just short of calling Manson a member of the Process, and he didn't have access to the information we uncovered. But Bugliosi did point out that two Process representatives flew from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to visit Manson in jail. After that session, Manson stopped talking about the group. 

The Process went underground in the summer of 1968, and offshoots sprang up in its stead. There, the evidence shows, Manson remained and was primed for violence by cult leaders who cross-connected liberally with the drug and celebrity sets. It was startling to see how closely the entire operation reflected the one in New York. But then, it should have: as the prison informants said, the same organization was behind both movements. 

25

Death Mask 

She disappeared from a nighttime street in Oceanside, Long Island, on March 26, 1985. She was just nineteen. It was a Tuesday evening and she'd come from a girlfriend's 
home and was walking along a side road to her job at a nearby Burger King. Across the street from Burger King, at Nathan's, it was "bike night," a Tuesday ritual. Although it was just 7:40 P.M., the weekly leathered hordes were revving their Harleys in the parking lot. 

But Jacqueline Martarella wouldn't see the bikers; would never reach her job. Jacqueline Martarella vanished in the early spring darkness. 

As soon as I read of the disappearance, I suspected foul play. I knew Jacqueline wasn't a runaway. Nothing fit. But I knew more than that. I was already involved in a probe of possible cult complicity in another disappearance and a murder, both involving young girls, in the village of Lynbrook, a few miles from Oceanside. When the Martarella disappearance was announced, I, and some in law enforcement, thought the cases were probably linked. 

In early March, Harry Daley, a writer and stunt coordinator for films, called me at my new residence in Jersey. Aware of what was going on around his community, he asked if I'd come to Long Island to look into the cases. Daley was a friend of Denis Dillon, the Nassau County district attorney. Dillon, Harry said, was concerned about the matter and would be willing to discuss the situation with me. And so I went. 

Two teenagers, Kelly Morrissey and Theresa Fusco, had recently vanished from the streets of Lynbrook in the early evening hours. Morrissey, fifteen, was still missing, but Fusco's body was later found buried beneath pallets in a wooded area near the Long Island Rail Road tracks in Lynbrook. She'd been raped, strangled and dumped nude in the cold November  air. She lay there a month before her body was discovered. Theresa Fusco was sixteen. 

Denis Dillon explained that there'd been a series of incidents in recent months in Nassau County. At some, witnesses spotted a van, apparently occupied by more than one person, cruising the areas from where victims vanished. 

"By definition, any conspiracy of more than two people engaged in multiple killings is a cult," I said. "What kind of cult it is remains to be seen." 

"I'm concerned about these incidents," Dillon said. "I'm aware of what you've done on Berkowitz and if you've got any ideas here I'd be glad to hear them." 

I told Dillon I'd like to visit the Fusco scene, and he gave Harry and me directions to find it. At the site, we examined the pallets which had covered Theresa's body. On one, there was faded writing in Magic Marker. The word "Rush" appeared—the name of a heavy-metal rock group. Beside it was a symbol the group used: the satanic pentagram. On another part of the same panel, a message was written. Some words were obliterated, but what we could decipher said: "Sex . . . No . . . virgin devil . . . allow." 

We didn't have to be hit over the head. For years I'd known that the rape of a young "virgin" was an important satanic ritual—and so was murder. 

Pulling the planks from the pallet, we turned them over to Dillon. 

"Somewhere out here, there's probably a cult working," I said. "I find it hard to believe she just happened to be covered with a pallet that had that crap written on it by accident. But maybe, on a long shot, it is a coincidence. I think we have to learn more." 

Dillon readily agreed. He wasn't prepared to call it a cult killing either. But Harry Daley, who'd carefully scouted the village of Lynbrook, pointed out that an unusual abundance of satanic and Nazi graffiti peppered certain hangouts in the town. He thought there was significance in that fact, and there was. Much of the graffiti was sophisticated, and the Nazi connection was important. I was beginning to envision a link to the biker crowd in Oceanside. Many bike gangs are satanically oriented, a fact not lost on the Process and Charles Manson, both of whom actively sought to recruit bikers as the advance troops of Armageddon. And in large letters, the word "rise" appeared among the occult graffiti at one location in Lynbrook. Manson's killers wrote that word in blood in the La Bianca home. I also remembered Vinny's comment about the Sam cult using bikers to transport illegal weapons. 

Still, neither Dillon, Daley nor I knew if we were dealing with an organized cult, a few satanically bent young men or a coincidence. An arrest was in the offing in the Fusco case, and John Kogut, twenty-two, was picked up on March 25. His apprehension was announced the next day—and Jacqueline Martarella vanished eight hours later in Oceanside, about four miles from the Fusco scene in Lynbrook. 

While the police searched for Martarella, Harry Daley and I went to work on John Kogut's background. Two other men were believed to have been his accomplices in the Fusco killing, and authorities were building toward their arrests. Kogut had named them in his confession. 

But Kogut himself had a history which contained some fascinating clues. A landscaper, he'd been a street kid most of his life. In and out of minor trouble, he was typical of the genre. But there was something else. A witness told us Kogut had once "burned a cross into his arm" and had shown the witness pornographic snapshots of himself. 

"He said he was involved in porno stuff," the witness explained. 

Shortly afterwards, Newsday reporter Sid Cassese, who'd been working with Harry and me, found out about Kogut's porno connection. He apparently was arrested as a male prostitute in New York City while still in his teens. Homosexuality, porn and New York City tie-ins. I was beginning to discern a familiar pattern. 

But the most important development was still to come. Seeking information, Cassese was loitering outside a Lynbrook video games emporium when he ran into a teenaged friend of Kogut's named Bob Fletcher, who was en route to a Friday night party with a companion. Stopping to talk for a few minutes, Fletcher told Cassese that Kogut was indeed into the pornography business in Manhattan and had even starred in a private, underground child-porn film. Its title was Five to Nine —a perverted play on the movie Nine to Five. 

Cassese wanted to interview Fletcher again, but he never got the chance. Several hours after talking to the reporter, Fletcher was blown away by a shotgun blast to the head out side his cousin's home in nearby Rosedale, Queens. Fletcher was dead, and Sid Cassese was a shaken man. 

The incident occurred at about 4:30 A.M., and it happened in the middle of the street. No gun was found. Yet authorities thought Fletcher, who had a history of emotional difficulties, might have taken a shotgun from the house, walked into the roadway and killed himself. As for the missing shotgun, police suggested someone in the house may have taken it from its place near the body. 

The other possibility was that Fletcher was murdered. The matter was unresolved, but Cassese said Fletcher was in good spirits when he spoke to him hours before. 

And then Jacqueline Martarella was found. Like Theresa Fusco, she was nude, ligature-strangled and apparently raped. Her body was found in late April 1985 hidden in tall reeds adjacent to the seventeenth hole of the Woodmere Country Club in exclusive Lawrence, Long Island, about five miles west of the spot from which she disappeared. 

In a day, I was at the scene. And there in the reeds, about fifteen feet deeper into the rushes than the body, I found it. It was one of the signs left at crime scenes by the Sam cult. I'd known about this proclivity since 1981, and Denis Dillon knew it, too, because I'd shown him a prison letter listing this and a few other objects this group often left at murder sites. For investigatory reasons, the object must remain unidentified, but it was not an item one would expect to find hidden near a murder victim. 

The object had been carefully placed, and it was apparent it was there for about the same length of time as the body— approximately a month. Its presence told me all I needed to know, and it telegraphed once again what I'd realized all along: the cult hadn't disbanded. Elements of it were still active. 

I also recalled something Berkowitz had written in 1979: "They will just replace me. There are others." 

Yes. Others like Berkowitz who, if arrested, would say nothing about their cult activities and assume sole responsibility for the crimes. Over the years, police undoubtedly had apprehended people they believed were solo operators but were actually connected to the cult underground. But nobody knew it. 

I called Denis Dillon from a nearby restaurant and he drove to the scene from his office in Garden City. It was a cold, blustery April day and the wind blew hard off the inlet water which lapped at the golf course. 

"This is it," I said, handing him the object. "Now we know what we're dealing with, on Martarella at least. I don't see how this can possibly be a coincidence. And I'd say there's probably some kind of link to Kogut's crowd, even if it's a loose one. This thing is a magical symbol for them," I explained, pointing at the object. "But nobody else would think it was the slightest bit relevant." 

"I know what you're saying." Dillon nodded. "But this is a police case to solve. I'm the prosecutor. We'll just have to wait and see what they come up with." 

I understood what Dillon meant. Outside investigators, even if welcomed by a district attorney, are not appreciated by police departments, whose job it is to solve cases in their jurisdictions. Anything viewed as interference, however slight, is met with resentment. 

However, within a week Denis Dillon was back at the Martarella scene. And, as before, it was a telephone call that brought him there. 

Harry Daley, "interfering" in police business, was asking questions in the neighborhood surrounding the golf course. He learned from a mailman that behind the course, in a secluded wooded section about six hundred yards from where the body was found, a small cave sat in a clearing. The postman had never looked inside, but he thought we might be interested in knowing it existed. We were. 

Inside the cave, which was actually an abandoned root cellar from an estate that had stood on the property years before, we found shocking evidence. The walls were emblazoned with satanic symbols: pentagrams, upturned crosses and other satanic slogans. Outside the cellar, which resembled a bunker, were a white half-glove and leotard undergarment that Jacqueline's father, Marty Martarella, soon identified to us as "very similar" to articles Jacqueline owned. When he looked in his daughter's room, her "similar" clothing was nowhere to be found. 

"Now we can make a pretty good call on why she was taken about five miles from where they nabbed her," I later said to Harry. 

"You mean they took her to that place, killed her there—if  she wasn't already dead—and then just drove her out onto the golf course and hid the body in the reeds." 

"It looks that way," I agreed. "And they left their calling card near the body." 

"These cops have got to be blind," Harry said. "They missed all of this." 

But the satanic cellar contained another secret, one we ourselves missed at first. It was buried in a pile of leaves on the musty dirt floor. It was a hand-printed note—one composed by a serious Satanist. It was a bastardization of the book of Revelation—one of the sources of the Sam cult's "theology," and Charles Manson's as well. Gingerly picking up the damp, aging paper, we read the note: 

Woe to you O earth and sea, for the devil sends his beast with wrath. Let he who has understanding reckon the number of the beast. For it is a human number. Its number is six-hundred-sixty-six. 

"Good God," Harry whispered. 
"Hello, John Carr's hand. This is big-league stuff," I replied. "And one of their favorite symbols, too. Take a look over your head. That's not General MacArthur up there." 

Harry peered upward through the gloom, and the message really began to sink in. Next to a black pentagram and a painted upturned cross were the chilling words: I WILL RETURN. 

"That's Satan's return to earth," I said quietly. "Like the note, it's a warning. The same thought was conveyed in the Son of Sam Borrelli letter eight freaking years ago—Til be back.'" 

"I feel like I'm on some Hollywood set," Harry muttered nervously. "I only wish we were." 

The note was turned over to Denis Dillon, who drove down from Garden City to examine the bunker himself. The letter's existence and that of the cellar weren't made public—although a local weekly newspaper, learning of the bunker from its own sources, later wondered if it might have some link to the slaying. 

In May 1986, John Kogut was convicted of the Theresa Fusco murder. In the interim, we learned that a close friend of his from nearby Long Beach was a Satanist, but there was no 618 Web of Conspiracy evidence linking him to any crimes. Kogut, in his confession, said Fusco was raped and strangled in a Lynbrook cemetery before being placed beneath the pallets in the woods near the railroad tracks, only blocks from where she disappeared. Two alleged accomplices, whom Kogut named in his confession, were later arrested and convicted in that case. 

Also in the spring of '86, someone close to Theresa Fusco said Theresa had knowledge of a satanic cult that was operating in Oceanside and Long Beach. 

Kelly Morrissey, who was an acquaintance of Fusco and one of the other men accused of that murder, was still missing and presumed dead. Besides her knowing Fusco, entries in Morrissey's diary revealed that she had dated John Kogut. There was little doubt that the Morrissey and Fusco cases were linked, along with that of Jacqueline Martarella, whose family said she was acquainted with members of Kogut's circle. 

At the same time, other murders of young girls continued to occur in the Nassau County region. And as of early 1987, the slaying of nineteen-year-old Jacqueline Martarella remained unsolved. 

As soon as the news broke that a decaying body was found in a smokehouse on a rural estate in suburban Tomkins Cove, New York, I began paying close attention. The body, partially eaten by animals, was discovered on the private property of John LeGeros on March 17, 1985. It turned out it had been there since the pre-dawn hours of February 23. 

Tomkins Cove, a small community in Rockland County, lies across the Hudson River from Westchester some thirty miles northwest of Manhattan. LeGeros was an American citizen employed in an executive capacity by the United Nations, and the presence of this rotting body was an embarrassment of no small consideration. 

The case caught my eye because the corpse's head was encased in a black leather bondage hood. Myriad possible connections spun through my mind. 

The body was soon identified as that of Eigil Dag Vesti, twenty-six, a Norwegian fashion model and homosexual who lived on West 26th Street in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. Vesti had disappeared the night of February 22. He was known to frequent the Limelight disco, also in Chelsea, and downtown homosexual S&M clubs like the Hellfire and the Mine Shaft. By now, I was really interested. 

On March 22, Bernard LeGeros, twenty-three, the son of John LeGeros, was arrested and charged with the murder. Vesti had been shot twice in the back of the head, stabbed and, the coroner believed, mutilated to attract devouring animals to the corpse. 

But LeGeros added more to that account. He confessed that he and millionaire Manhattan art dealer Andrew Crispo, forty, had driven Vesti to the LeGeros estate and there, at Crispo's direction, LeGeros shot the handcuffed and hooded Vesti in the back of the head in the bizarre culmination of a sick S&M ritual. Crispo, a homosexual, had met Vesti that night in the Hellfire, according to LeGeros' attorney, Murray Sprung. 

After snorting a considerable amount of cocaine provided by Crispo, Vesti was enticed to travel upstate to the LeGeros property. The plan was the ultimate sacrifice: murder. LeGeros stated that Crispo told him to shoot Vesti twice— once to kill Vesti's body and once to kill his soul. 

LeGeros said that Vesti's blood was drunk, a satanic practice, and that Crispo sexually penetrated knife wounds in the victim's body. The heart was also cut out, LeGeros confessed, and the body then set on fire. 

LeGeros wasn't homosexual, but he'd been hired to work in Crispo's West 57th Street art gallery and was soon turned into Crispo's slave, he said, addicted to the vast amounts of cocaine Crispo supplied. 

Crispo used LeGeros as an enforcer. The art dealer, according to numerous sources and official complainants, was said to have lured gay men to a back room of the art gallery, where they were tied up and whipped by LeGeros, who sometimes dressed as a police officer. 

Crispo, according to an associate of LeGeros, Billy Mayer, had a Hitler fantasy and reveled in the notion of Nazi uniforms. This, too, was another link to the Sam cult. 

Author Anthony-Haden Guest, who published a major story about Crispo in New York magazine, added another compelling lead when he told me Crispo had spoken about snuff films and a contact for them in Houston. 

And in addition to his Manhattan dealings, the wealthy Crispo owned a home in Southampton, Long Island. That did it. 

In Denis Dillon's office in the early spring of 1985, I asked the district attorney if he'd do me an important favor. 

"Roy Radin used to keep lists of guests from some of his  parties," I explained. "I haven't seen any, but I know they exist. His place was raided out there in '80 and '81. Would you mind contacting someone out there to see if you can pry one of those things loose?" 

"Sure," Dillon replied. "What are you looking for?" 

"Andrew Crispo." 

A week later I was back in Dillon's office. He gave me a puzzled look and handed me a large typewritten piece of paper. It was the guest list from Radin's 1981 wedding. There were numerous names on the alphabetized roster. 

"I circled one for you," Dillon said. "I don't know how the hell you were so sure." 

I looked down at the page, and there it was: "Andrew Crispo." 

"This doesn't really surprise me," I said. "Remember what the prison informants said about the big-money people being involved in this stuff? Here we have Roy Radin tied in to murder, S&M, snuff films, bisexuality and cult activity. Now we have his buddy Andrew Crispo tied into exactly the same things—including one of the sickest murders I've ever heard about. Now, Denis, do we call this 'coincidence'?" 

Dillon smiled. "No, we do not," he replied. 

Anthony Haden-Guest soon filled in some additional blanks. Crispo, he said, was allegedly involved in extensive cocaine dealing and was definitely a friend of Radin's pal Paul Hill,* who delighted in thirteen-year-old girls and whose town house was known as "the Nursery." 

"Hill's supposed to be hooked on heroin himself now," Haden-Guest explained. "He was a good friend of Radin and was close to Crispo, too." 

"That makes sense," I replied, and showed Haden-Guest the list. Hill's name was also on it. 

Because of the sensitivity of the investigation, I wasn't able to tell Haden-Guest what I was looking into. But he graciously offered to help anyway. 

Andrew Crispo didn't deny that he was at the scene of the murder, but did deny ordering it. When called to testify at LeGeros' trial in September 1985, he took the Fifth Amendment over and over again. Because of New York State law concerning the testimony of a conspirator, Crispo couldn't be charged with murder on only the statements of LeGeros. 

However, the Rockland County district attorney's office was  still trying to build an independent case against Crispo. Meanwhile, the debonair art dealer was sentenced to prison for evading some $4 million in taxes. If nothing else, he was on the shelf for a while. 

LeGeros was convicted of murder. Accompanied by Hank Cinotti, I made it a point to attend his trial. From the witness stand, another conclusive piece of evidence was revealed. However, we were the only people in attendance who knew its significance. 

Dr. Frank Varess, a Manhattan psychiatrist who examined LeGeros, told the packed courtroom LeGeros had revealed that Crispo "was part of a satanic cult which drank the blood of its victims." 

The doctor testified that Crispo, encouraging the drinking of Vesti's blood, told LeGeros to "drink the blood. We always drink the blood in the cult." 

Case closed for me. A search that began in New York eight years earlier and traversed the country several times was now being dramatically confirmed—again—in a Rockland County courtroom. 

In the hallway during a recess, New York Post reporter Bill Hoffmann approached me. "Did you hear that?" he asked, and then stopped. "Is that why you're here? Does this have anything to do with Son of Sam?" 

"I'd just say it's a hell of a case. But you might be interested in going strong with that cult comment in your story today, Bill. You wouldn't be on the wrong track if you did." 

Hoffmann's Post article on the trial the next day was headlined "DOC: CRISPO IN SATANIC BLOOD-DRINKING CULT." 

Steve Dunleavy, now the metropolitan editor at the Post, had a good memory. 

The following morning I approached Ken Marshall, LeGeros' co-counsel, and asked him what he thought of the cult testimony. 

"We've been dealing closely with Bernard for months now," he said. "We think he's told the truth about it." 

"So do I, for a host of complicated reasons. I'm trying to follow up on that angle. It might even affect Bernard's case someday, but I don't know." 

I then asked Marshall if LeGeros might be willing to answer several questions I'd written out, and the lawyer said he'd do what he could. 

After the lunch break, Marshall and I leaned against a windowsill in the hallway outside the courtroom. LeGeros had replied to the inquiries and Marshall read me the answers. 

There was indeed a satanic cult, LeGeros said. And Crispo was in it, and so were a number of other wealthy people in Crispo's circle. There were other bodies buried somewhere, Crispo told him. Some, LeGeros believed, were in Southampton. He didn't know where any others might be, but he was told there were more. 

The cult had tapes or snuff films of murders. He hadn't seen any, but Crispo told him about them. Crispo had in fact talked about blood-drinking ceremonies in the cult, LeGeros said. 

LeGeros hadn't known Crispo for very long, so he wasn't familiar with the names of most of Crispo's friends, he said. But yes, Crispo had spoken about Roy Radin. Crispo knew Roy Radin. Crispo had also talked a lot about Paul Hill. LeGeros didn't know if Radin was in the cult, but he believed Hill was. 

Crispo also spoke about a William he knew in Los Angeles. LeGeros didn't know William's last name. (I was looking for a connection to Bill Mentzer, and perhaps had found it. I had just received information that Mentzer allegedly was involved in an art-theft operation in Los Angeles.) 

LeGeros said he himself wasn't a member of the cult—that was restricted to Crispo's rich friends, so far as he knew. 

LeGeros, ignorant of why the questions were put to him, had just confirmed everything the prison informants had said years before. 

Roy Radin was dead well before LeGeros met Crispo, so his incomplete knowledge of the Crispo-Radin relationship was consistent with the chronological facts. I already knew from the Radin guest list that an association existed between him and Crispo. LeGeros just bolstered it, and added to what we previously learned about the wealthy Paul Hill. 

Later, evidence surfaced that another affluent Manhattan social figure of considerable prominence was connected to both Hill and Crispo. This man, said to be bisexual, was closely associated with a woman who professed to be a witch. The man was alleged to be "part of a circle" of necrophiliacs who gathered late at night in select Manhattan funeral parlors to engage in sexual activities with attractive corpses of either sex. Checking with beat cops who worked in the man's precinct, I learned that they, too, had heard of his bizarre conduct. 

At the conclusion of the LeGeros trial, I met with Rockland County investigator Jim Stewart, who was involved in the Vesti case from the outset and served as courtroom aide to DA Ken Gribetz, who personally prosecuted LeGeros and advised the jury that he intended to pursue Andrew Crispo for his alleged role in the murder. 

I told Stewart and Lieutenant Frank Tinelli of Stony Point what we'd developed. I knew the background details wouldn't directly build their case against Crispo in the Vesti killing, but as intelligence data they might prove valuable. 

"We think it's possible there may be another body or two in Rockland," Stewart said. "We don't know it for a fact, but it's a suspicion." 

"I'm afraid there may be a number of them here and there," I agreed. "We're just going to keep moving ahead from our side of the fence. We may cross paths sometime in the future." 

In Rockland, the Crispo investigation would continue, and authorities later told me they'd also unearthed evidence of Crispo's cult involvement. One man said to be part of Crispo's circle was famous makeup artist, Way Bandy, who subsequently died of AIDS. 

In 1988, Crispo would stand trial in Manhattan on other charges. An individual named Mark Lelie had reported that Crispo, LeGeros, and others had tortured him at Crispo's art gallery several months before the Vesti killing occurred. This time, Bernard LeGeros testified against his former mentor, but to no avail. Crispo was acquitted and returned to jail on his tax-evasion conviction. 

We'd now come full circle. We'd followed the trail of death and violence from coast to coast and back again. And the vicious crimes continued throughout that journey of nine years. 

And then, once more it was summer. For eleven months each year the world I now inhabited was too often strafed by the depraved and the tragic. But in July, as always, I sought out one of the few constants in my life. 

In Davis Park on Fire Island, precious little changed from summer to summer. No matter what wars were waged between August and June, the open arms of the ocean always beckoned in July. The sea, the sparkling beach, the people and a tranquil waterside mood were perennially waiting. There, it seemed, time stood still. And with the Atlantic crashing beside  me, I could once more dance through a world of never was and dream and tell myself that none of it had happened. If only that was so. 

On July 31, 1986, the anniversary of the shooting of Stacy Moskowitz and Robert Violante, I aimlessly walked the night beach alone. Nine years before, a brilliant orange moon hung low in the summer sky and shimmered off a quiet sea. That night, Stacy's tragic end, had been my own beginning. Now, I needed to reflect . . . 

In the years since that summer of Sam, I'd roamed a netherworld I wouldn't have believed existed then. That was my age of innocence, and it was gone forever. I'd never wanted to discover that such a terrifying subculture menaced America. But it lived; and it thrived. And it was growing. I'd come to know that very well, as did the many others who traveled parts of that precarious road with me. Together, we ventured into that nightmare world and out again. And it changed us all, in one way or another. 

With few exceptions, those people were strangers to me on July 31, 1977. Now, although many remained behind as the hunt moved through and beyond their states and jurisdictions, a bond remained. For that I was grateful. Those people—prosecutors, press, police and others—defied the system. They cared. They cared a hell of a lot. And their contributions were invaluable. 

And so, too, were those of the unexpected partisans—the several convicts who, at considerable personal risk, reached out to convey information they knew was too important to languish, as they did, behind prison walls. 

The roster of the dead was never far from my mind. So many people connected to the case who were alive that night in 1977 had been murdered or died violently since. And some of those had been under our close scrutiny when the end came. Arrests were not in my realm, but I couldn't help but recall a comment Lieutenant Terry Gardner once made: "You get them one way or another, don't you?" 

If that was so, the satisfaction was slim. But maybe, in my own way, I had managed to influence a justice that was beyond the reach of the courts. If so, the verdict was fate's: it was meant to happen as it did. 

In various jurisdictions, investigations continued. In Queens and California, especially, authorities still sought answers to questions which plagued them for years. The hope was that some final pieces might soon fall in place. 

I believed arrests were possible in some of those cases. As I wandered past the lonely dune house that marked the western border of Davis Park, I inventoried the murders. Yes, I thought, persistent investigation could still bring killers to justice in the slayings of Christine Freund, Virginia Voskerichian, Stacy Moskowitz, Arlis Perry and Roy Radin. And success in any of those areas would certainly open the door to others. 

It was imperative that one of those portals swing open soon. From every indication and piece of evidence I'd gathered, the ominous signs pointed to a burgeoning cult movement in and around New York, Houston and Los Angeles, at the least. These cities were part of the organized network, and its membership ranks, I learned, were steadily growing—populated to a large extent by young and successful people from professional walks of life. These, in turn, would align with the successors of David Berkowitz and the Carr brothers. 

And beyond the umbrella, parent group, independent cults were springing to life in virtually every state in the U.S.A. In many instances, these groups would seek alliances with the old order, and some would do so successfully. 

In my own investigation, things kept happening right into July 1986. Just weeks before we arrived on Fire Island, the Los Angeles area social club we'd linked to the Sam cult was torched. Arson. And the blaze was ignited at the same time inquiries about the club were being made. 

Of the many highlights during the years of investigation, the work done on Bill Mentzer was one endeavor which would forever occupy a prominent place in my mind. We didn't have a name; we didn't have an address. We had my analysis of the Radin, Freund and Perry scenes and information provided by Vinny in Dannemora. And yet, out of some 250 million people, we traced one man across nearly two decades and made the impossible link a reality. 

But such efforts extracted a toll. I, for one, was weary. Walking the night beach, I wanted to step away from it all and never look back. The path I'd traveled was one marked by persistent tension; and always, there lurked the shadow of danger. Moreover, when one infiltrates the darkness for so long it is easy to forget the sun is still shining somewhere. 

I'd spent too many years living on the edge: it was time to search for a safe harbor. By year end 1986, every meaningful bit of information we had developed on any of the cases or suspects would be in official hands. 

It was probably good that I would soon complete my involvement in the various investigations. But again, that's why I came to Fire Island—to ease some frustrations and to think things through and work them out. I'd been there nine days, and my reason was beginning to rhyme again. 

After an hour on the sand, I felt better. It was time to turn east and head back to the house. Into the wind now, I felt invigorated and relaxed. I inhaled deeply as a gust of salty night air blew in from the sea, pushing a rising tide of optimism; of hope. Family and friends were waiting at the beach house, among them the same group that had gathered on the dune stairs to discuss the ongoing Son of Sam case nine years before. 

And it was still ongoing. 

With that recollection, my mind cleared and I wasn't tired any longer. 

The focus remained on the West Coast. New information which made its way to me in mid-July of 1986 was specific: not only was the Chingon cult still active; it had now established strong financial ties with a private college in the Los Angeles area. The cult's wealthy leaders were said to be funding the institution, and satanic activity was in fact flourishing on the campus. 

At the same time, police in the Los Angeles area and two former L.A. Satanists sent word that an East Coast cult branch allied with the Chingons—the Black Cross—was operating as an elite "hit squad" for various U.S. satanic groups involved in drug and pornography enterprises. Obviously, the narcotics and child-porn details further confirmed earlier New York prison allegations. And as for the Black Cross itself, it appeared to be closely linked to the Sam cult in New York and existed for one purpose: murder. 

Its function, the California contacts said, was the elimination of defecting cult members or other enemies, including innocent people who inadvertently learned about a given group's illegal activities. Murder, anywhere in the country, was now but a phone call away for the cults tied in to the Chingon network. 

As mentioned earlier, when I traveled to Los Angeles in late January 1987, I was aware that the official Roy Radin investigation was effectively stalemated for about two years. Sidestepping the Sheriff's Office, I met with Deputy District Attorney David Conn and supplied him with a list of people I'd come to learn were close associates of Bill Mentzer. Among them, I told Conn, were "the big four": Bill Rider, Bob Lowe, Alex Lamota [Marti], and Bob Deremer. 

Unknown to me at the time, about a week earlier L.A. sheriff 's investigators Charles Guenther and William Stoner, who had just been assigned to monitor the case, had begun tracing the transfer of a Cadillac from Elaine Jacobs to a middleman and finally to Lowe on May 13, 1983—the very day of Radin's disappearance. The car, they suspected, may have been awarded to Lowe as payment for participation in the murder. 

The day after my meeting with Conn, Guenther and Stoner phoned Sergeant Carlos Avila, who had originally handled the Radin matter but was currently on temporary assignment at the FBI Academy in Virginia. Avila advised the detectives that all the information on the Radin case was contained in the office's files, but added that he'd also discovered a curious coincidence had occurred. Avila reported that Los Angeles Police Department Sergeant Glen Sousa—who was LAPD's lead investigator on the Radin case for its missing persons unit during the month before Radin's body was found and the probe turned over to Sheriff's homicide—had left the LAPD shortly afterward to take a job offered him by none other than Bob Evans. 

Guenther and Stoner would soon learn more: Even before Radin's body was discovered, Sousa was the beneficiary of an Evans-arranged, star-spangled complimentary weekend in Las Vegas. Fred Doumani, who along with his brother, Ed, provided the initial financing for The Cotton Club deal but later suspended funding the film, stated to police that Evans had called him "sometime prior to Memorial Day, 1983" and asked that Doumani arrange a gratis stay for Sousa at the Golden Nugget. According to the official report, Evans advised Doumani that "Mr. Sousa had been very good to him and please take care of him while he was visiting Las Vegas." 

It was heartwarming to note Evans' concern for the wellbeing of key members of the LAPD. 

Throughout the coming months, the detectives delved deeper into the investigation, now aware of both the names and relevance of Rider, Deremer, and Alex Lamota Marti, in addition to the confirmation I'd provided for their original belief about the nature of Lowe's relationship with Mentzer. Nonetheless, Stoner attempted to dismiss my involvement in the case during a telephone call he received from a police official in New York. It then became readily apparent that if the probe developed to the point of arrests, the Sheriff's investigators would be disdainful of acknowledging the documented roles played by an East Coast journalist and Ted Gunderson, a former FBI supervisor from southern California. In fact, a Sheriffs detective would later accuse us of "interfering" with their inquiry—an inquiry that had accomplished nothing between 1983 and 1987. 

But then, I had gone over the detectives' heads to Conn, and I'd also pointedly told the deputy district attorney that I was less than enthralled that arrests hadn't been made by the Sheriff's Office between 1983 and 1987 when, in my opinion, there were numerous solid leads to pursue. Fortunately, Conn wasn't as parochial as the police, who conceivably had an ax or two to grind. He returned each of the handful of calls I made to him during the late winter and early spring of '87. 

Regardless, as the investigation progressed, the detectives gained further confirmations about the suspects when, for the first time, they interviewed Mentzer's ex-wife on March 23, 1987. Deborah (De De) Mentzer, who had remarried, stated that Mentzer's "best friends were men named Don Davidson* and a Robert Lowe, and that he also ran around with a man named Bill Rider . . . Debbie then stated that Bill Mentzer had a running partner named Alex . . . and added that he was very mean and acted like he liked to go around hurting people." [Eight months earlier, my own source had said Alex was a "violent person who had claimed to be a member of a hit squad in Argentina at one time."] The former Mrs. Mentzer also put a name and face together when she identified Bill Rider from a photograph that investigators had removed from Mentzer's apartment after he and Lowe were arrested on the cocaine rap not long after Radin's murder. 

Rider, whose name and close connection to Mentzer apparently were unknown by authorities until my meeting with Conn, was pictured with Mentzer in "a remote, desert-like area," the police report of the session with Deborah Mentzer stated. 

The locale would turn out to be Caswell Canyon, the scene of Radin's demise. 

When shown still another photo gleaned during the 1983 search of Mentzer's abode, his ex-wife identified the man she knew only as "Alex," who was standing with Mentzer in that particular picture. 

On April 14, 1987, the L.A. detectives learned that Talmadge (Tally) Rogers—Elaine Jacobs' dope runner who disappeared after an alleged coke and cash ripoff of Jacobs shortly before Radin's death—wasn't missing after all. He was safely ensconced in a Louisiana prison following his conviction on child molestation charges. 

On May 6, in a jailhouse interview with the police, Rogers admitted that he'd helped himself to ten kilos of Jacobs' cocaine and some $260,000 in cash as well. He said he did so because Jacobs was short-changing him on his commissions for transporting dope from Florida to Los Angeles. Rogers also remarked that Radin was not involved in the heist. He went on to describe Radin's heavy use of cocaine and revealed details of the alleged Florida-based coke distribution system Jacobs was operating in concert with her former lover, Milan Bellechasses. The police would soon learn that Bellechasses had been arrested recently and was being held on federal drug charges in Fort Lauderdale. 

Rogers' ex-wife also spoke to the California detectives and told them that she accompanied Jacobs to Bob Evans' Beverly Hills home one night in March 1983—a night when "two male Latins" subsequently arrived and engaged in a private conversation with Evans and Jacobs. Rogers himself had told police of a meeting at Evans' home between Jacobs and the producer —after which Jacobs said, according to Rogers, that a discussion was held about financing Hollywood films with drug profits. According to Rogers, Jacobs reported that "there were approximately eight to ten movie people interested in producing movies using narcotics money." 

In the meanwhile, investigators learned from a source close to Demond Wilson that the actor, who was supposed to be Radin's bodyguard on the night he disappeared, "may possibly know more than what he is telling the police." That report seemed to coincide with the suggestion that was mailed by my informant Vinny from a New York prison as far back as July 1983 about a Radin "bodyguard." Wilson, it may be worth noting, occupied an office at Paramount Studios during the 1982-83 time period when he was co-starring in the TV series, The New Odd Couple. And it was Wilson, a weekly tabloid 630 Web of Conspiracy would report in 1988, who was on the run from a hit man from a satanic cult. The paper, quoting associates of Wilson, said the actor-turned-evangelist was fearful he'd be killed because of some knowledge he allegedly possessed about the Radin case. 

For all the advances achieved in the police investigation in early 1987, the eventual biggest break didn't come until May. It was then that the detectives spoke to Bill Rider for the first time. To quote from the official report: 

In May of 1987 investigators contacted William Rider via telephone. He told investigators that he knew William Mentzer and Alex Marti. He agreed to fly to Los Angeles and assist . . . with this investigation. . . . Investigators showed him a photograph of himself and William Mentzer, and a photograph of Mentzer and Alex Marti. . . . Mr. Rider stated the photographs were taken possibly in 1982 [in] a remote canyon somewhere north of Los Angeles off Interstate 5. Mr. Rider had been to the location on that day only, and added Mentzer spoke of using the location for target practice. . . . While driving on Interstate 5, Mr. Rider directed investigators to exit the Hungry Valley road turnoff .. . to where a dirt road begins. He then directed investigators to drive up the dirt road into a canyon. After traveling several hundred yards on the dirt road, Mr. Rider stated, "This is where the photographs were taken." .. . We were standing within a few hundred yards of where victim Radin's body was recovered. 

Rider informed the police that he was the brother-in-law of Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, and that he had employed Mentzer, Lowe, and Marti as security guards in 1982— 83, which is exactly what I'd told Deputy District Attorney David Conn four months earlier. Rider also said that he was afraid of the unholy trinity, "and if they knew he was cooperating with the police they would kill him and his family." 

Rider didn't mention Bob Deremer in this conversation, but he also knew him from security work at Flynt's. However, Rider did say that he was playing poker with Mentzer, Marti, and others in 1983 "when Marti and Mentzer began bragging about killing victim Radin. . . . Rider recalled that they tried to sell him Radin's Rolex watch and a ring [which had been taken from the body], but he declined." Also, according to the police report, "Mentzer told Mr. Rider that Bob Evans was involved in the hit along with Mentzer's girlfriend, Lanie [Jacobs]." 

Rider wasn't through. He also said that after leaving the Flynt operation he employed Lowe on a security job in Texas in 1986. One night, during a drinking bout, Lowe told him that Mentzer had also murdered a "black transvestite" in the San Fernando Valley and that he, Lowe, drove the getaway car on that sordid occasion. Lowe allegedly told Rider it was a "contract" killing, and that the victim's companion had been wounded during the attack. 

When authorities investigated Rider's story, they found that a prostitute named June Mincher was slain on May 3, 1984, on Sepulveda Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley community of Van Nuys. Mincher's companion, a transvestite, was indeed wounded during the foray. Mincher had been shot seven times in the head with a silencer-equipped .22 pistol. 

At the time of her death, Mincher was suspected of trying to extort money from an Italian-American family that had then hired a friend of Mentzer's to handle their security. Mentzer's buddy in turn employed Mentzer, Lowe, Marti, Bob Deremer, and another man to help him out. 

By now, the L.A. detectives knew they were on to something valuable, so they asked Rider if he'd cooperate further. Citing a reasonable concern for life and limb, Rider opted to ponder the offer for a while. 

Meanwhile, in New York, we'd been doing some additional work of our own on Mentzer, discovering that he once had a Maryland driver's license and an address in that state's city of Cumberland—where we learned Bob Deremer also had resided. Even more significantly, we pieced together fragmented bits of information that led to the strong suspicion that Mentzer could be classified as a suspect in the April 1977 disappearance and apparent murder of a Washington, D.C., area disc jockey. The music man had operated a restaurant on the side and apparently ran into some difficulties with creditors who may have been linked to organized crime. A few weeks before he disappeared, a man using the name of "Mentzes" obtained a job at the deejay's establishment. When the disc jockey vanished, so did "Mentzes." If valid, the scenario would have placed Mentzer on the East Coast, just two hundred miles  from New York, during the ongoing Son of Sam spree and less than two months after Christine Freund was allegedly slain by Manson II in a "hit" that was hidden in the string of supposedly random .44 killings. 

As 1987 drew to a close, Los Angeles detectives continued to build their case against the Mentzer crowd and Elaine Jacobs. They learned that Jacobs had married for at least the third time in 1985, was living in Florida, and that the new lucky (though soon to be unlucky) man was a suspected major league cocaine dealer from Florida named Larry Greenberger. Greenberger, whom some dubbed the "Meyer Lansky" of cocainedom, was said to be a top lieutenant in the dope trafficking empire of the notorious Carlos Lehder, who was doing two life terms on federal narcotics dealing convictions. Lehder was widely believed to have been the kingpin of perhaps the most powerful coke cartel in the U.S. 

In April 1988, Bill Rider surfaced again, this time telling the Los Angeles Sheriff's Office that he'd resume assisting the investigation. It is not yet known what enticed Rider to reconsider his earlier position, but it is safe to assume that he probably had more impetus than a simple desire to function as a good citizen. 

As an initial act of good faith, Rider turned over a .22 Ruger semiautomatic pistol that was enhanced with a silencer, telling the police—as he had done in 1987—that Mentzer had once borrowed the weapon from him. Rider suspected that the Ruger might have been used to kill prostitute June Mincher. The police suspected the same and shipped the gun off for a ballistics comparison that, an official report says, determined a match existed between bullets fired from Rider's .22 and casings and slugs recovered at the Mincher scene. 

At about this time, the Sheriff's detectives learned that Bob Lowe and Bob Deremer had moved to Maryland. Rider agreed to fly east with the police and allow himself to be wired in an attempt to record incriminating conversations with the pair. A meeting was arranged at the Crystal City Marriott hotel in Arlington, Virginia, on May 10, 1988. Lowe bowed out beforehand, stating a schedule conflict, but Deremer arrived and allegedly told the tape recorder listening in on him and Rider that Mentzer had indeed shot June Mincher and that he, Deremer, had remained at a bar to alibi himself for the time of the slaying. 

Deremer then allegedly stated that when Mentzer and Lowe returned to the tavern, Mentzer asked him to drive him back to the crime scene so that he, Mentzer, could observe what the police were doing. Deremer purportedly acceded to Mentzer's request and saw that detectives were still at the site when they drove past. Deremer also allegedly said that he was living with Mentzer and Lowe at the time and received a few months free rent for his gracious aiding and abetting. The recorded conversation also allegedly revealed that Deremer knew Mentzer had borrowed and used Rider's .22 in the Mincher killing. 

During his meeting with Rider, Deremer, according to police reports, also discussed the Radin murder on tape, quoting Lowe as telling him that he received a black Cadillac Seville (the car transferred to him by Elaine Jacobs) and some additional cash for his part in the kidnap-murder. 

The Los Angeles detectives, who were assisted by the Virginia State Police in this phase of the investigation, were now on a roll. The next night, May 11, Maryland State Police joined in when they provided Rider with another body wire to use during a meeting scheduled with Lowe for that evening in the Scoreboard Cafe in Frederick, Maryland. 

According to a police report, Lowe told Rider that he'd driven the escape car during the Mincher homicide and complained that he encountered difficulty in getting hit man Mentzer back into the auto because Mentzer "was yelling at and kicking the victim after the shooting." 

And Bob Lowe kept on talking, perhaps reserving a future seat for himself on death row. According to the official report, Lowe admitted that he drove Jacobs' limousine on Friday the 13th of May, 1983—and to being behind the wheel when Roy Radin stepped inside on his final night on earth. [Mentzer, witnesses said, had arranged for the limo rental and put up some extra cash to obtain the car minus the usual company driver.] 

Interestingly, Lowe also said that Mentzer and Alex Lamota Marti planned to shoot Radin thirteen times because it was Friday the 13th. Would Mentzer also have thought to plant a Bible at the site opened to Isaiah Chapter 22—with a very significant thirteenth verse? The answer to that question isn't known, but strong suspicion certainly abounds at this point. 

In his recorded conversation with Rider, Lowe also allegedly admitted that he received the Elaine Jacobs Cadillac plus $17,000 in cash for his services. And he further said, according to official documents, that "the Radin contract hit was paid for by Lanie Jacobs and Robert Evans." 

Two months later, back in Los Angeles, the Sheriff's detectives rented a pair of rooms at a Holiday Inn on Church Lane. Both rooms were wired for sound. On July 7, the occupant of one of those rooms, Bill Rider, phoned Mentzer while the customers in the adjoining room—the police—listened in. Mentzer agreed to drop by for a visit with Rider early that evening. 

Arriving at the hotel, Mentzer made his way to Rider's room and apparently proceeded to make his own "hit" record, so to speak. According to the official report, Mentzer revealed that sometime before June Mincher was slain he, Alex Marti, and another man broke into the hooker's apartment and pistol-whipped her. Mentzer, who had termed Mincher a "transexual," also described how he planted a bomb under the gas tank of Mincher's car, but the explosive was a dud. He further stated that he wasn't worried about the pistol-whipping of Mincher because the statute of limitations had run out on that possible charge. 

Indeed, but not on the murder charge. 

Obviously feeling relaxed with his old friend Rider, Mentzer got around to discussing Roy Radin's murder, allegedly stating that he and Alex Marti were in the follow car while Bob Lowe drove the Jacobs-Radin limousine. At some point, the details of which are not clear in the report, Mentzer allegedly described that he and Marti entered the limo and had Radin seated between them, with Lowe still at the wheel as the auto sped down an unspecified stretch of Sunset Boulevard. 

What happened to the follow car is also not certain, but it is believed that the group probably switched back to it a short time later, as the person who rented the limo to Mentzer told authorities the car had only about sixty seven miles on it when it was returned early the next morning. The round trip to Caswell Canyon alone would have accounted for approximately 130 miles, exclusive of the mileage accumulated between the rental office in the Bel Air Hotel and the Hollywood Regency, where Radin was picked up. Moreover, the rental agent told police that the limo had been returned with about three-quarters of a tank of gas in it—too much if the vehicle had made the journey to the canyon. 

The alleged follow car, a Lincoln, also was tentatively traced to a friend of Mentzer, whom police believed loaned the auto to the suspect. The Lincoln had been searched as far back as July 25, 1983, and the examination revealed plant material was in the front seat on both the driver's and passenger's sides, under the backseat and hood, and in the trunk and undercarriage—possibly indicating that the car had been driven into rugged terrain such as Caswell Canyon, and that its passengers had climbed out at such a location. 

At any rate, as Mentzer and Rider continued chatting in the Holiday Inn, Mentzer allegedly stated on tape that Radin was killed over The Cotton Club deal and that, in yet another arrangement, Alex Marti had hired him to eradicate an Iranian dope competitor but he'd returned the money when he couldn't carry out the job. Mentzer also allegedly told of how he, Lowe, Deremer, Marti, and another individual assured a friend who purportedly had knowledge of the Mincher killing that they would provide financial assistance to his wife and family if he kept quiet about the prostitute's death while spending time in prison on federal drug charges. 

The police wanted more, and Rider said he thought he could provide it if Mentzer could be led to believe that his old amigo was himself involved in criminal activity. No problem. A phony dope deal was arranged for which Mentzer was hired to provide strongarm protection. The "deal" was consummated on August 5, 1988, with Mentzer being introduced to an undercover cop who represented himself as a narcotics trafficker. 

A few weeks later, on September 7, Mentzer and Rider convened again. This time the pair rendezvoused at Prezzo's restaurant; and this time Mentzer was accompanied by a man he introduced as Vincent Angelo from Miami. After dinner, Mentzer and Rider stepped into the recording studio that was disguised as Rider's car. 

During the conversation, Rider suggested that the "narcotics dealer" Mentzer met a few weeks before might want to utilize him to kill somebody. Mentzer allegedly replied that he'd be happy to comply if the price was right, and went on to say that Vincent Angelo had recruited him to deep-six a Miami couple and offered him $100,000 for the doubleheader. Mentzer then allegedly said that he'd split the take with Rider if Rider helped him pull off the job. 

Mentzer also allegedly said that Vincent Angelo was a top dog in Carlos Lehder's drug pyramid, and that he had still another arrangement in mind for Mentzer: to torch or bomb a  Florida home owned by Angelo and his wife that had been leased to an elderly man who'd "trashed" it. Rather than bother remodeling the house, Angelo wanted it to disappear so he could collect the insurance money. Accordingly, Mentzer was to ensure that the blaze appeared to be accidental. 

Shortly after leaving Mentzer that night, Rider identified a police photo of Vincent Angelo. Only he wasn't Vincent Angelo. He was Larry Greenberger, the latest husband of Elaine Jacobs. 

Sometimes justice maneuvers in unusual ways. Exactly one week later, on September 14, Larry Greenberger was dead, courtesy of a bullet in his brain. Greenberger expired on the front porch of the house he shared with Karen Elaine Jacobs Delayne Greenberger, etc. in Okeechobie, Florida. His widow told authorities that her husband committed suicide with his own gun. It may have been his own gun, but suicide was another matter. 

"We're looking at it as a homicide," Sheriff O. L. Raulerson said. And Okeechobie County Medical Examiner Dr. Frederick Hobin added: ". . . As the case continues and the investigation continues, it becomes apparent that it was a homicide rigged to look like a suicide. He was shot and then the gun was placed in his hand." 

Somehow, Hobin's scenario reminded me of a similar one that was played out ten years before in Minot, North Dakota. 

In the week preceding Greenberger's death, Bill Rider and Mentzer got together once more in Los Angeles. Mentzer had told Rider about a storage locker he kept in Van Nuys to stash an arsenal of weapons and explosives. Rider indicated that he had a safe he wanted to store, and Mentzer offered the use of another locker in the same facility. And so it was that detectives learned of Mentzer's mini-armory. 

While at the storage facility, according to the police, Mentzer told Rider that he had organized the Radin killing and that a book had been published calling it "a perfect crime." Mentzer was referring to the original hardcover edition of The Ultimate Evil, which did anything but describe the murder as a work of art. At the same time, Mentzer allegedly told Rider that he had been involved in numerous other murders throughout the United States. That revelation would come as no surprise when I learned of it. 

Mentzer didn't know it then, but his days were numbered.  Shortly afterward, when Larry Greenberger fell dead in Florida, local authorities began digging into both his and Elaine's backgrounds. Apparently, the couple had lived a quiet, respectable existence in the community and residents were stunned when the sordid details began to accumulate. Soon, Los Angeles detectives heard the news. Just who shot Greenberger wasn't immediately known, but it was time to ring down the curtain. 

Arrest warrants were issued for Mentzer, Bob Lowe, Alex Lamota Marti, and Karen Elaine Jacobs-Greenberger for the murder of Roy Radin. In addition, Mentzer, Lowe and Bob Deremer were flagged for the slaying of prostitute June Mincher. 

In early October, Mentzer and Marti were seized in L.A., Greenberger in Florida, and Lowe in Rockville, Maryland. A short time later, Deremer was arrested in Cumberland, Maryland. 

In announcing the apprehensions, a Sheriff's spokesman said that at least some of the suspects may have been involved in other killings across the United States. 

As for Bob Evans, Deputy District Attorney David Conn did not directly implicate him in the Radin murder, but said that Evans was "one of the people who we have not eliminated as a suspect." 

Among the numerous weapons seized that allegedly belonged to Mentzer—including TNT, cluster bombs, and various automatic pistols—was a .44 Smith and Wesson revolver. 

Also found with Mentzer's possessions was a highlighted, underscored copy of a hardcover book: The Ultimate Evil 

In New York too—where David Berkowitz has remained silent for several years—there were new developments. On two successive weeks in November 1988 NBC television's Unsolved Mysteries aired segments on the Son of Sam conspiracy. Numerous tips and leads were phoned in to the program, some of which were promising and are currently under investigation. 

At the same time, a former counselor at Columbia University in New York City came forward and identified a suspect the prison source Vinny had known only as "Rudy." The counselor stated that he had seen Rudy in the company of Michael Carr on several occasions in a bar near the university —and we'd long known that Michael Carr used to associate with people from the school and imbibe in local pubs. The counselor said that Rudy was "either a Tex-Mex or Hawaiian guy who used to pick up work as an extra or a driver in films or TV shows from time to time." Rudy's exact whereabouts are unknown at this time, but the tavern he frequented with Michael Carr was called The West End. The counselor's report constituted yet another of the many confirmations we'd obtained during the investigation of the information the New York prison sources had provided. And as noted earlier, James Camaro, whom the informants had named as a key figure in the .44 and related cases, was identified and located in mid-1987. Camaro remains uncharged because there is not yet enough corroborating evidence to hold him. 

Of other developments in late 1988, one was especially ominous. Yonkers residents who lived near Untermyer Park state that the cult—or offshoots of it—was active there once again, and had been since early 1987. The group was observed by several witnesses, including three off-duty Yonkers police officers who investigated the park one night in the summer of '88. Neighbors also supplied me with recent photos of mutilated dogs and said they'd learned that the cult had been using another location in Yonkers too. 

The group's return brought to mind another disturbing aspect of the entire investigation: the realization that the cult movement, which had been bent toward violence since at least the late 1960s, was still expanding while law enforcement remained virtually powerless. Few police understood this type of conspiracy; most couldn't relate to it. Mimicking law enforcement, Vinny once wrote: "The 'insane' always act solo—the group is well aware of this cop attitude and uses it to their advantage." 

Through experience, I knew that Vinny was essentially correct. Police departments tend to rapidly close the books after arrests. Seldom were they inclined to delve beneath the surface. That posture had, beyond question, figured in the expansion of the satanic cult movement. Thus, the occasional arrest of an isolated, supposedly lone criminal had little perceptible impact on the groups' master plans. 

But there are indications that a change might be in the wind. On February 26, 1987, the Interfaith Coalition of Concern About Cults conducted a day-long seminar on satanism for members of law enforcement. The conference, which was held at the Archdiocese of New York in Manhattan, was attended by 120 police officials from the New York tri-state area. 

An in 1988, I addressed police seminars on cult crimes that were held in Providence, Rhode Island; Binghamton, New York; Richmond, Virginia; and Decatur, Illinois. Attendance exceeded 225 in Decatur and 150 in Rhode Island and Virginia. Other official conferences on the subject have been scheduled for 1989 in various parts of the country. 

Throughout the U.S., it is evident that many police departments are now focusing on the potential dangers of satanic cult activity. In a like manner, there has been an increased awareness of the problem on the part of educators, clergy, and mental health professionals. 

Whoever intervenes, the involvement is necessary. There is compelling evidence of the existence of a nationwide network of satanic cults, some aligned more closely than others. Some are purveying narcotics; others have branched into child pornography and violent sadomasochistic crime, including murder. I am concerned that the toll of innocent victims will steadily mount unless law enforcement officials recognize the threat and face it. 

Unlike some of those authorities, I've been there. I know how serious the situation is. The torch that was put into Manson's hand in 1969 was never extinguished. It was instead passed to Berkowitz and others, and the violence and depravity continued. The evidence demonstrates that the force behind that carnage was in place both before and after the Manson and Son of Sam slayings. And, lurking in various guises, it is still there. 

A letter Vinny sent me in the wake of the Roy Radin murder in 1983 said: "When will they learn that I've only told the truth? Yes, it sounds fantastic—but so many true things sound fantastic. Let's see—what number victim is this now? . . . You know, in another two years there won't be anyone left to capture." 

Oh yes, there will. And their numbers are growing. 

And this time, there is no insulating Middle America. This time, it isn't an inner-city eruption that can be written off as the inevitable fallout from poverty and slums. No, this battleground is elsewhere: the list of the dead tells that story. The killer cults were born and nurtured in the comfort zone of America and are now victimizing it at will. 

Manson's haunting testimony and a later warning from David Berkowitz echo loudly across the years. Two state- 640 Web of Conspiracy ments, made on opposite coasts nearly a decade apart. Yet the dire message is the same. 

"What about your children?" Manson challenged a Los Angeles courtroom as the 1970s began. "You say there are just a few? There are many, many more, coming in the same direction. They are running in the streets—and they are coming right at you 

In New York, Berkowitz would write: "There are other 'Sons out there,God help the world." 

Sometimes, late at night, one can know the truth of their words. Through the darkness, a foreboding wail can be heard. Faintly at first, then more insistent and nearer, the reverberations ring through urban canyons, roll across the shadowed byways of Scarsdale and Bel Air, and are carried on the night wind to the remote reaches of rural countrysides. 

It is a mournful, curdling cry. 

It is the sound of America screaming.


source
https://crashrecovery.org/pidcock/The%20Ultimate%20Evil.pdf 

FAIR USE NOTICE

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. As a journalist, I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of artistic, cultural, historic, religious and political issues. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Copyrighted material can be removed on the request of the owner.