This is 1 section from EIR's sepcial report on Satanism. This report can be obtained for $100 from EIR in Washington, DC. For further information call (202)457-8840. IX. Child murder in Atlanta In 1978, Larry Flynt was prosecuted in the State of Georgia for violation of the pornography laws; it is here that he was shot, receiving a crippling injury which has confined him to a wheelchair. Certainly, his enemies were not the Satanists: to the contrary, Satanism, drugs, pornography flourished in this evil city, and do so to this day. Atlanta is sometimes called a crime capital of America. According to drug enforcement experts, Atlanta became an important center for narcotics distribution with the upgrading and expansion of South American and Caribbean drug trafficking into Miami. The pattern is an expansion to routes into Georgia and Houston, Tex. Conjointly with this, Atlanta became more important as a center for drug cartel money-laundering operations. It is certainly a regional capital for an international Satanic network. We shall show that the coverup which occurred at the time of the Atlanta Child Murders, has allowed Satanism to flourish there virtually unchecked. - The Atlanta Child Murders - From July of 1979 to May of 1981, 29 black adolescent and young adult males were murdered in Atlanta, Ga. The circumstances of their death clearly indicated a ritual element, and extensive media play guaranteed an international spotlight. At the time, one credible motive for the murders appeared to be political: to foment racial tensions. The Satanic element gradually unfolded. The officially recognized victims were mainly adolescent black males, who were known to be involved in drug running and in male prostitution. There is every indication that pornographic photographs, and perhaps videos as well, were being produced. One possibility is that the young men and women were murdered during the course of the production of ``snuff'' films; another is that the deaths were part of some sacrificial ritual. Other motives suggested for the crimes included retribution for violations of the criminals' own internal code (for example, that the young people held back drug profits). There is a question whether the list of 29 child-murder victims is meaningful, since other bodies, both white and black, male and female, were found during the same time period; and deaths occurred fitting the pattern of the Atlanta Child Murders after the imprisonment of Wayne Williams, the man convicted for the crimes. Sixty-three other people were murdered in Atlanta between the years 1979 and 1982. Twenty-five of these occurred after the arrest of Williams, the supposed lone assassin. In 1979, Atlanta was known as the murder capital of the U.S., with 231 homicides, according to FBI statistics. The children were known to frequent the house of a black man named Tom Terrell, known to them as Uncle Tom. Here, they were paid $10 or $15 to perform oral sexual acts. The children were also sodomized. They were given marijuana and some other form of narcotic which was daubed on their faces. The existence of Uncle Tom's house never came out in the trial of Williams, despite the availability of eyewitness testimony. There was definite evidence that some of the dead children had spent time with their captors, perhaps days, before they were killed. They were wearing clothing different from that in which they were captured, and the remains of food taken from their stomachs showed that they had eaten meals after the time they were last seen by friends and family. The children were apparently smothered to death--one possibility is that they were smothered at the moment of orgasm, while performing oral sex. Sexual organs were missing on many of the remains, which had been left to moulder outdoors. The location where one boy's body was found was the same place where, some years earlier, homosexuals had been shot in a gang war over control of the homosexual entertainment industry. Later, there was also a spate of firebombings of homosexual and sexually oriented entertainment spots in Atlanta. The murders took place against a backdrop of racial-political tension in the city. When Maynard Jackson became mayor of Atlanta in 1973, he reorganized the heretofore lily-white police force. This created dissension, which was later reflected in the politics of the investigation around the murders. Jackson hired Reginald Eaves to run the Police Department, but he was ultimately forced to resign after charges of corruption charges were brought against him, and Lee P. Brown, who subsequently relocated in Houston (and now New York), took over the job. Brown had received a PhD in police administration, and had served in Portland, Ore. and San Jose, Calif. before coming to Atlanta. Brown was in charge at the time of the murders. Many people felt that the way that he handled the investigations was so incompetent as to suggest either corruption on his part--involvement in the homosexual circles who came under suspicion--and/or blackmail. Maynard Jackson also came in for criticism. The situation surrounding the investigation of the killings was so bad, that some of the parents of missing children expressed doubt that the remains which were found were actually those of their own children. They found things such as discrepancies in dental work between the remains and their own children's dental records. In one instance, it is reported that the police themselves tossed a coin in order to decide to which of two missing boys, the body before them belonged. In other cases, there were reports of sightings in other cities, of boys supposedly dead. One of the boys was found with a stab wound in the stomach, surrounded by five ceremonial cuts, according to an acknowledgement by a medical examiner, subsequent to the Wayne Williams trial. (No Satanic connections were brought out by the Williams defense.) Several parents reported to investigators that when they saw their children's bodies they had crosses carved on their foreheads or chests. Newspapers reported three such instances at the time. - The occult connection - Atlanta has long been an occult center. Not only had the Process-Foundation Faith cult opened a chapter there, but there was a home-grown Wicca network run by a witch who called herself Lady Santana, and one Lord Merlin. Lady Santana was also known as Samantha Lerman. Lady Santana's Ravenwood Church of Wicca was granted tax exempt status in the State of Georgia. There is also another witchcraft coven operating openly there, known as The Avalon Center. It is run by a woman styling herself as Lady Galadriel, High Priestess of the Grove of the Unicorn. The Atlanta Wicca Church changed its name to the Church of the Old Religion in 1979, following the murder of a 15-year-old girl. Jolene Tina Simon was killed at Ravenwood House during an open house ritual. She was killed shortly before May 29, 1979, and a man named David Reese Williams, a 23-year-old unemployed paramedic, was subsequently indicted by an Atlanta grand jury for manslaughter. According to accounts, Williams coolly placed a gun to Simon's head and pulled the trigger, when she told him, ``Kill me!'' Williams claims not to remember the incident, and Wicca members who were present testified that the murder was accidental. A member of the Wicca Church from Ohio, who called herself Lady Circe, was also reported to be present in Atlanta during the time of the Child Murders. An independent investigative team in Atlanta, led by Dr. Sondra O'Neill (who was then teaching literature at Emory College in Atlanta), and including Albert Joiner and the sometime presence of Roy Innis, head of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), plus investigative journalist Ira Liebowitz, and a former Atlanta chief of police, developed many leads indicating a Satanic aspect to the crimes. (These individuals collaborated with each other on an informal basis but were by no means always in agreement.) Former Atlanta police officer Chuck Dettlinger published a book on the murders, {The List,} which is of interest because it documents a consistent record of police failure to follow up investigative leads. Dr. O'Neill was brought into the case by James Baldwin, who had been commissioned by {Playboy} magazine to write an article on the murders. She was already collaborating with the famous author on his biography. They hired two graduate students from the University of Pennsylvania to assist them. Later a New York investigator, Galen Kelly, was brought on the scene by Roy Innis. Kelly (who is prominent in Anti-Defamation League circles, and was indicted in New York City for kidnaping a member of a New Jersey cult, purportedly to deprogram the individual) systematically impeded O'Neill's investigations. Kelly has in the past worked closely with Rabbi Maurice Davis, as part of a purported anti-cult network; Davis, however, is the individual who originally helped sponsor Jim Jones of Jonestown fame. Because of Baldwin's prominence, many people from the local community came forward privately with information. One of these informants was subsequently gunned down by police on the flimsy pretext that he showed resistance to arrest when they sought to enter his house. Others were threatened. The major informant was one Shirley McGill (who subsequently came under the control of Innis and Kelly). McGill admitted to having been employed as a bookkeeper by a drug-trafficking operation that was based in Florida. In the summer of 1977 she became involved with Parnell Traham, who was working as a cab driver in the Miami area. He practiced voodoo. He had served in the Vietnam War, and it was apparently in Vietnam that he became involved in the drug traffic. The modus operandi of the operation was to purchase used cars in Miami, which were then loaded with drugs and transported by rural routes to Atlanta and to Houston. McGill was recruited by Traham to serve as a bookkeeper for his operation, and she was sent to Atlanta. O'Neill described the drug operation as operating in a cell formation, where individuals from one cell did not know those in other cells. McGill was introduced into an inner circle, who controlled the various cells. These people were also Satanists. In March of 1980, she was invited to a ceremonial ground in Atlanta. She was instructed to wear a long dress, with a scarf covering her head, but not to wear undergarments. An initiation ceremony took place, in which dope was smoked and there was some sexual activity. According to her account, McGill sought to keep her distance from the cult activities. When she did attend ritual ceremonies, she would volunteer to act as a guard on the perimeter of the area. While the members of the drug network with which she was involved were black, the high priest during the occult ceremonies was a white man, and white and black would participate in the rituals. The high priest would appear naked, wearing goat horns on his head, and would seem to appear from a cloud of smoke. A ring of candles would create a kind of altar, and these were placed surrounding the statute of a short, fat, seated man. The ceremonies which she witnessed included animal and human sacrifice, which included slitting the victim's throat and then drinking his or her blood from a chalice. The sexual orgy which would follow, included having sexual relations with animals. After this, people would bathe in a body of water adjacent to the ceremonial grounds. McGill identified several outdoor sites where rituals were held. Funeral homes were frequently used to dispose of bodies, which were placed in the closed coffins of people who were being buried from the funeral home. McGill also pointed out places from which the drug operations were run. One was a machine shop, another a barn or warehouse, and there was also a house. McGill related three incidents which occurred apart from these ceremonies, one of them in a barn. A black man dragged what appeared to be a dead black child into the barn by a rope tied around the child's neck. Various individuals tried to get McGill to pull the rope but she refused. The child's body was then placed in the trunk of a car. On another occasion, McGill was working in the machine shop, when two men brought in a young black child who was bound. The boy knew McGill and appealed to her for help. He told her that he would be killed because he had withheld money from the sale of drugs. Later she witnessed his murder, when a plastic bag was placed over his head. On another occasion she saw on the floor of the barn a naked child, who appeared to be dead. According to McGill, a young woman named JoAnn was also murdered at the same time. On some occasions McGill intimated that she had been involved with this woman in scamming the drug overlords, and so she feared for her own life, and that was the reason that she had broken with the cult and sought out Dr. O'Neill and Roy Innis. At other times, she mentioned fears for the safety of her son, and she also suspected that she might be chosen as a sacrificial victim in cult ceremonies. McGill reported seeing one of the purported victims of the Atlanta Child Murders alive. The FBI also interviewed people who claimed to have seen this particular boy alive as late as December of 1981. Witnesses near the location of the abduction of one child on the official victim list, identified Parnell Traham as the driver of the car used in the abduction. In none of the abductions of the children, is there any indication that they resisted capture. This leads to the hypothesis that they knew their captors--in some instances, these may even have been family members, or respected members of the community. It is not credible that all of the murdered children had been holding back money, since in that event some would have resisted capture; furthermore, it should not have taken almost 30 murders to convince the young people, most of whom knew each other, of the dangers of scamming. - Other witnesses - Over the four-year period in which Dr. O'Neill conducted her on-site investigations, eight witnesses surfaced to describe what had occurred. They located three main sites, one in Cobb County. They described the sacrifice of hundreds of victims, not merely the children identified in the Child Murder cases. One witness was a black magic preacher who operated from the basement of his own father's church. In all, four different witchcraft covens were identified. These apparently shared two sites, which were identified by witnesses. Periodically, they would come together for ceremonials. The sites were near bodies of water, and they would made of boulders placed in semi-circular configurations. Old Indian burial sites were preferred, and trees played a part in the ceremonies. Circumstantial evidence suggests Process-Foundation involvement. Hairs of German shepherd dogs were found in some of the remains of child victims. Severed heads of dogs were also found in the vicinity of ritual sites. A volunteer named Don Laken, formerly from Pennsylvania, was active in ``assisting'' the police. He was known as the ``dog man'' because he ran a kennel where he trained a large number of attack dogs, mainly 90 German shepherds. Laken admitted to a member of Wayne Williams's defense team--which he claimed to be aiding--that he himself practiced Satanism. He was seen wearing gold jewelry, all symbolizing German shepherds, including a large shepherd's-head pendant which he wore around his neck. Laken was particularly active with the numbers of so-called psychics who flooded the police with their offers of help. It should be noted that the Foundation Faith definitely incorporated clairvoyance in its revised rituals. In January of 1981, an anonymous telephone call alerted searchers to the existence of an unoccupied house in southwest Atlanta. Here neighbors had observed an unusual pattern of activity. There was also a smell of decayed flesh around the house. Two Bibles were found nailed to the wall, one of these was opened to the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 1. (This choice of passage is reminiscent of a similar message left on the site where Roy Radin was found murdered in 1983.) In this passage, God chastises His children for their sin and disobedience. Verse 15 reads: ``Your hands are those of murderers; they are covered with the blood of your innocent victims.'' Verse 16 reads, ``Oh wash yourselves! Be clean!'' Verse 29 reads, ``You will blush to think of all those times you sacrificed to idols in your groves of sacred oaks.'' Chapter II, Verse 6 states, ``The Lord has rejected you because you welcome foreigners from the East who practice magic and communicate with evil spirits.'' - Wayne Williams - Most investigators believe that Williams was involved to some extent in the murders. Most probably he was used as a pornography photographer. He operated as a small-scale talent scout, organized a musical group called Gemini, and may have enticed some of the child victims. After his arrest, the {Egyptian Book of the Dead} was found among his possessions, and he himself owned a German shepherd named Sheba. Shirley McGill claimed to know him. Various spectators in the courtroom at the Williams trial appeared to be wearing occult symbols. Information was made available to the defense team, naming two police officers who were reportedly in Williams's Satanic group. This did not surface at the trial; however, it coheres with McGill's assertion that the Satanists had police protection. The arrest of Wayne Williams came after the investigation appeared to be dead-ended, but after then-Vice President Bush made a trip to Atlanta, demanding that some action be taken. Williams himself was at first extremely confident that he would be quickly released. The evidence that he was a sole assassin is unconvincing, to say the least. No witness descriptions of alleged abudctors fit the description of Williams. In fact, he was charged with only two of the murders. Williams pleaded not guilty, and nothing in his behavior evidenced a criminal disposition--other than his privately admitted membership in the Satanic cult--nor was any motive for the crimes established. There would appear to have been an agreement between the defense and the prosecution, to suppress the Satanic connection. Yet, in the case of stab wounds found on the bodies, two of the three victims so found, had wounds which were inflicted by a left-handed person; Williams is right-handed. Williams's own father, also believed to be a member of the cult, is left-handed. Perhaps Williams was induced to protect him. There were three other suspects held by the police, of whom two were released and one was committed to a mental institution. All three were dismissed as crazy by the police. The individuals had first contacted a minister to whom they appealed for help in their effort to reveal what they knew about Satanic cult activity. - Satanism in Atlanta today - Atlanta is currently the home of Fay Yager, founder of the Sanctuary Movement in the United States. Mrs. Yager has taken upon herself the painful task of organizing resources for parents who are seeking to protect their children from child abuse by their spouses or former spouses. She was drawn into this activity as she herself, and then her friends, found that the courts not only turned against them, and refused protection to their children, but actively supported the abusers. At first, she believed that the problem was primarily pedophiliac child abuse; only gradually did she begin to realize that three-quarters of the children who came to her attention for help, were in fact the victims of abuse by practicing Satanists. When her own daughter was 2 years old, Mrs. Yager found out that her previous husband, Roger Jones, was abusing her. She was unable to prevail against him in the courts, and only two years ago was she vindicated, when he was arrested for pornography and the rape of another child. In the meantime, he had been given custody of their daughter, who became pregnant as a teenager--and suffered miserably. The lawyer, Robert Fournoy, who defended Mrs. Yager's husband, became a judge, and in that capacity has continued to protect child abusers. Another Atlanta woman who now works with Mrs. Yager, Victoria Karp, has four grandchildren who were given by this judge into the custody of a father whom they reported to have been Satanically abusive to the three oldest. Mrs. Karp's daughter has chosen to hide out, rather than to release the children. The judge in this case was the same Robert Fournoy who had successfully defended Fay Yager's first husband. In the Karp case, it appears that the father was a member of a three-generational witchcraft family, and would be taken to the home of a great-aunt where ritual ceremonies took place. The children have drawn pictures of people being stabbed before altars. The mother did not realize what was happening, until she saw her daughter Alicia touching her own and her father's genitals during a church service. Over time, the children revealed that they had been taken to ceremonials in which young babies were murdered. The daughter herself had been filmed performing sexual acts. Testimony by the children was rejected by the court on the grounds that they were too young to be credible witnesses. At the time, the girl was 5, and the two boys 3 and 1. Alicia has said that she saw the parents of a little boy hand him over to be sacrificed and that that had really scared her. She said that she always believed that if something happened to her or her brothers, her Mom would come looking for her. This belief was shaken when her father told her that her mother knew everything. He also told her that everyone did these things, but just did not talk about them. Once, Alicia got really upset over something and wouldn't cooperate, insisting that it was time to go home; but she wanted to wait for her younger brother Gary. After a time, they brought her pieces of a little boy with red hair and told her it was Gary. After she became hysterical, the real Gary came out. Alicia doesn't know who the other little boy was. Gary told about going out ``hunting'' with his dad at night. He said that bank machines were good hunting grounds, but that sometimes, on a bad night, they would just go out and find street people to use in the rituals. He said that sometimes, kids were brought in by van and stored in houses or warehouses. The 3-year-old insisted that his great-aunt had a penis. He also said the adults would ``drown'' him by blindfolding him and shoving a ``hose'' down his throat--lots of different people would stick hoses down his throat and then shoot liquid out of the hoses as they pushed the hoses deeper and deeper. All three children said that balloons were stuck inside them and blown up. (Later, during raids conducted by police on some of the sites described by the children, the police did find helium tanks. They said it was a common practice used to stretch the children's vaginal and anal openings without scarring them, in preparation for sexual abuse.) In all, Alicia reports witnessing an incredible 42 ritualistic murders. Some of these were of adults, some children, even some children who were turned over by their own parents to be sacrificed. There were also instances of babies who were bred for sacrifice right in Cobb County. She was able to tell when and where the murders occurred. Many of the sites which she described had been previously identified by Shirley McGill as places where she too, had witnessed Satanic ceremonies, including human sacrifices. (In another instances, another child whom Mrs. Yager is helping described a site where sacrifices occurred but he could not tell where it was. Dr. O'Neill suggested a location familiar to her from the Child Murders, and when the boy was brought to that neighborhood he immediately located the identical building, a funeral home.) The Cobb County police tried to investigate the case; however, the detective who was most active was taken off the case, and is now being sued by the cult. The therapist who had worked with the children is also being sued. The FBI claimed that it did not have the manpower available to investigate the child abuse; however, it is now extremely active in trying to locate Mrs. Karp's daughter, in order to return the children to the custody of their father. Fay Yager relates numbers of similar such cases throughout the country. - The strange case of Mark David Chapman - On Dec. 8, 1980, rock star John Lennon was gunned down in front of the apartment building where he lived in New York City by Mark David Chapman, a man with no apparent motive for the murder. Chapman admitted his guilt, and was intermittently repentant. He claimed that he had been led to commit the act because he was possessed by the Devil. He also claimed to have found direction in J.B. Salinger's novel, {Catcher in the Rye,} which he had in his possession at the time of the murder. He was not known to have been concerned with the career of John Lennon, in the past; nor, except in the period just preceding the murder, had he been seen with the book. The apartment building outside which Lennon died was, ironically enough, the Dakota--the scene at which the film {Rosemary's Baby} had been filmed. Chapman was born in 1955, in Atlanta. During his early teens he was such a heavy drug abuser that he was known as a ``garbage head,'' someone who would take any drug indiscriminately. Chapman reformed in 1971, when he was ``saved'' by a California evangelist named Arthur Blessed. He worked as a summer counselor for Blessed's group, and he also had overseas assignments for it. In 1975, he spent a month in Beirut, and in 1978, he did a world tour, staying at YMCA hostels. In 1975 he also worked at a camp for Vietnamese refugees, run by the Y in Arkansas. Chapman was apparently prevented from making a career with the YMCA, because he was unable to get a college degree. He appears to have had some sort of breakdown while in college. In 1989, Fenton Bresler wrote a book about Chapman, titled {Who Killed John Lennon,} in which he strongly hints that Chapman was a bisexual who was heavily involved in a homosexual circle in Atlanta. One long-term friend of Chapman was a deputy sheriff in Georgia, Gene Scott. It was Scott, in fact, who provided Chapman with the explosive, hollow-point bullets which he used to kill Lennon. Scott and Chapman shared quarters while Chapman was living in Atlanta. In 1976, Chapman decided to move to Hawaii. While there, he attempted to kill himself. He was employed at the center where he went for treatment after this attempt, and then later worked as a security guard. It is not clear how he might have funded his 1978 world tour, which took him to Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Delhi, Israel, Geneva, London, Paris, Dublin, Atlanta, and then back to Hawaii, where he married the travel agent who had booked it for him. Supposedly he financed the trip with a credit-union loan. His new wife, Gloria Abe, had been involved in occultist circles, but she is supposed to have converted to Christianity after their romance began. At this time, Chapman borrowed money in order to invest in art. Chapman told the police that, had he not succeeded in shooting Lennon, other possible targets were Johnny Carson, Walter Cronkite, Jacqueline Kennedy, or George C. Scott. Bresler's thesis is that Chapman was brainwashed by the CIA as part of the MK-Ultra project, because John Lennon was felt by conservatives to be a potential new John Kennedy. - The Lennon connection - To our mind, it is far more likely that Chapman's claim to being demonically possessed indicates that he had been drawn into Satanic networks while he was still a young man in Atlanta. The possible involvement of some respected individuals, whether from the YMCA or the sheriff's office, in these same networks, would agree with the pattern of coverup in the Atlanta Child Murders, which occurred during the same period as the Lennon murder. John Lennon and Yoko Ono themselves were deeply involved in occultism. In May of 1979, Lennon and Yoko Ono ran a paid advertisement in New York, London, and Tokyo: ``Sean [their son] is beautiful. The plants are growing. The cats are purring. More and more we are starting to wish and pray.... Wishing is ... effective. It works.... Magic is real. The secret of it is to know that it is simple, and not to kill it with an elaborate ritual which is a sign of insecurity. We love you.'' Lennon and Yoko contributed $100,000 at this time to set up a non-profit organization they called the Spirit Foundation. When Chapman shot Lennon he might have walked away, and perhaps escaped arrest, but he stood around. This suggests a magical interest in being present at the moment of death. When Chapman worked as a security guard and then maintenance man, his job site was located directly opposite the Scientology headquarters in Honolulu. It was thought that he was responsible for making phoned death threats to the Scientologists. He also played Beatles records loudly enough to disrupt their activities. Three other men were also involved in harassing the Scientologists at the time. This targeting of the Church of Scientology is suggestive of the Process Church feud with Scientology. Charles Manson also developed enmity to the Church, whom he believed to be persecuting him. It is the case that a Scientologist living near one of the Manson Family hangouts helped two members of the family to free themselves from Manson's influence. John Lennon was a heavy LSD user, and he was involved in England with the occult circles led by Kenneth Anger which included the Process Church. In the winter of 1966, Lennon began studying the writings of Timothy Leary, including his version of the {Tibetan Book of the Dead;} however, it was Yoko Ono who solicited the services of Caribbean {curanderos} and employed her own, virtually resident, witchdoctors in New York City. (Anger, perhaps not coincidentally, is reported to have been lecturing in Honolulu at a time when Chapman could have met with him.) Yoko Ono got involved with {curanderos} in 1974. She first decided that her apartment at the Dakota was haunted and needed to be exorcised. She became a client of Santeria practitioner John Green. She also followed the guidelines of a Japanese occultist Takashi Yoshikawa, whose cult followers may have included Gloria Abe. Chapman and the Lennons were in Tokyo at the same time in 1978. John Green hooked up with a corrupt art dealer named Samuel Adams Green, Jr., and the two men worked a scam on Yoko Ono, selling her paintings at excessively high prices. In March of 1977, Yoko connected with a witch named Lena, whom Sam Green had met in the Caribbean, at St. Tropez. The meeting with the witch took place in Cartagena, and included a pact with the Devil, and blood sacrifices. At the time of Lennon's death it was rumored that he had planned to separate from Yoko Ono. Clearly, if this is so, from a financial point of view at least, she benefited from his death. - The Hand of Death - Serial murderers have in general been treated as lone assassins, despite their often open connections to Satanists. For example, the serial murderer Richard Ramirez, known as the ``Night Stalker,'' bragged that he was in the service of the Devil. Henry Lee Lucas is another case in point. Lucas operated across the whole of the United States, committing rapes and murders, apparently working as an operative for a Satanic Murder, Inc. group. His attempts to warn the world that he had operated as part of a Satanic secret society calling itself the Hand of Death, have gone largely unheeded. With a background similar to that of Charles Manson, and of a similar age, Lucas was born near Blacksburg, Va. on Aug. 23, 1936. His mother, Viola Lucas, was a hillbilly prostitute who was married to an invalid and local moonshiner. (Manson was born two years earlier to a mother in similar circumstances.) Lucas's upbringing, like Manson's, was brutal, and by the time he was 23 years old he had served two terms in prison. Eventually, Lucas was arrested and charged with the murder of his mother, and in March of 1960 sentenced to 40 years in jail. He was, however, paroled 10 years later. Just three blocks from the prison, he raped and murdered a woman. Although this Michigan murder never caught up with him, Lucas did spend four of the next five years, from 1970-74, in Jacksonville Prison in Florida on a kidnaping conviction. The prison system was remarkably generous to both Lucas and Manson. Drifting around the Mid-Atlantic area, Lucas wound up in Carbondale, Penna., where, on Aug. 6, 1975, he met up with Otis Toole. Toole, a homosexual, was already a member of the Satanic cult. The two men traveled the country robbing, raping, and murdering. Toole showed himself to be a cannibal, during this time. During this initial six months of association, Lucas and Toole did two contract killings for pay, both of which were arranged through Toole. After this spree, Toole brought Lucas back to his home in Orlando, Fla. and introduced him to his family. Based in Orlando, Lucas and Toole made several other trips out of the area carrying out robberies, rapes, and murders. In Orlando, they connected with a man who offered them the job of transporting stolen cars across country. They would be given $1,000 for each trip, to drive cars to Chihuahua in northern Mexico and then fly back to Shreveport to pick up the next car. They refused this. This sounds very similar to the operation to transport drugs, described by McGill. - The cult - In October 1978, Toole informed Lucas that he was working with the Satanic Hand of Death cult, and offered to introduce Lucas into it. In an autobiographical account of his life, Lucas's description of his induction to the cult, sounds like a rerun of the recruitment methods of Constanzo. That Lucas knew of the existence of Satanic burial sites in the Matamoros area--before the police discovered them--suggests that the similarity may not have been fortuitous. First, according to Lucas, the initiate is warned that once one joins, there is only one way out--death. Toole, who urged Lucas to join, told him that the Satanic ritual practiced by the Hand, ``Gives us the power to do anything we want as long as we obey the master.'' Once Lucas agreed to join the Hand of Death, he, was driven directly to the training camp, which was located in the Everglades area. On his arrival, the first task which he was given was the murder of one of the ``students,'' a young black homosexual who had betrayed his oath to the Devil. He slit the man's throat and later that same evening, a Satanic ritual was performed in which the dead man's heart was cut out, his blood drained, and his body dismembered. All of the initiated members of the Hand drank the dead man's blood and ate pieces of his flesh. The remains of the body were then burned at an altar. According to Lucas's account, there were several hundred students at the Hand of Death training camp, coming from six different countries; over half of them were women. The camp provided unlimited access to all kinds of drug-taking, which was encouraged recreational activity. Liquor was available, and after evening ritualistic sacrifices, there would be a drug/sex orgy involving all the campers. The daytime part of the program included a full curriculum of training courses in murder, rape, car theft, drug trafficking, and every other form of organized criminal activity. Each student had already been assigned a partner and a sponsor, who paid the cost of the training. Lucas's training lasted for seven weeks. After leaving the camp he was assigned to work on kidnaping operations run by the organization. He and Toole were instructed to kidnap three babies and deliver them to a ranch located in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, which was a four-hour drive from Juarez. Next they kidnaped two young girls, approximately 11 and 13 years of age, who were to be used as porno actresses in a snuff movie. Over a 10-month period, the Lucas-Toole team traveled around fourteen states in the United States. After 10 months, at his request, Lucas was reassigned to contract killings, and over the period of one year he participated in six professional assassinations, which he claims were of a Spanish Army general, a politician in Mexico City, a Canadian in Toronto, two Houston millionaires, and a politician from west Texas. In a subsequent assassination, Lucas and Toole were dispached to murder the ``money man'' at the Chihuahua ranch, who was considering ``retiring'' from the kidnaping and ``kiddy-snuff'' business. The Hand of Death is also in league with organized crime in drug-trafficking operations. In part, the members of the Hand themselves are regular drug users and therefore need their personal supplies. Lucas describes carrying out drug deliveries between Midland and Stoneburg, Tex. (in the north central part of the state). Lucas claims that he was sent on behalf of the Hand to deliver vials of poison to Jim Jones's People's Temple shortly before the mass suicide there. He has described traveling to Guyana on a chartered plane and delivering the poison. He also says that he was approached to carry out an assassination of President Jimmy Carter, a job which he declined although the price tag was obviously very lucrative. He also says that rumors circulated among Hand of Death members that Lee Harvey Oswald had been a member. Lucas eventually was picked up by the police and claims to have had a religious conversion. The Sheriff of Williamson County, Tex., Jim Boutwell, began an extensive debriefing/interrogation of Lucas in August 1983, which led Lucas to reveal information about the Hand of Death. As a result, a Lucas Task Force was created involving county sheriffs, the Texas Rangers, and the FBI. - The cult resurfaced? - An ugly case in Virginia, which broke in August of 1989, suggested that the same networks are still in operation. At that time, in a move which may have actually averted more important revelations from surfacing, U.S. Attorney Henry Hudson revealed the existence of a Satanic pedophile ring which was being tracked by California detectives and an FBI task force. Two men were arrested and charged with being part of a national conspiracy to kidnap children in order to sexually abuse them. According to Hudson, 100 FBI agents had been involved for six months in tracking Dean Ashley Lambey of Richmond, Va. and Daniel T. Depew of Alexandria, Va. The two men were charged with conspiracy to unlawfully seize, confine, inveigle, decoy, kidnap, abduct, or carry away and hold for ransom and reward and otherwise use a person unwillingly transported in interstate and foreign commerce. They were caught when they responded to a computer bulletin board advertisement placed by the San Jose, Calif. police, who pretended to advertise for a young boy. Officer James Melvin Rodrigues, Jr. of the San Jose Police Department Sexual Assault Investigation began a probe of computer bulletin board services in February. Some bulletin board services, available to anyone with a personal computer, a modem, and a telephone line, are used to facilitate contacts among those interested in Satanic practices and/or deviant sexual partners. Rodrigues posted a public message with a bulletin board called Chaos, on Feb. 28: ``From: Bobby R. To: All. Subject: Youngsters. Looking for others interested. Hot and need someone. I'll travel if we can set something up. Pics or the real thing better. I like taking photo and being the star. Hope someone is interested.'' He received an answer the next day from a Dave Ashley, later identified as Dean Ashley Lambey: ``Your message caught my interest. Think we may have something in common but need to explore more. Want to Talk?? P.S. I like REAL youngsters!!'' In subsequent phone conversations Lambey expressed a sexual preference for pre-adolescent Caucasian males, ages 8 to 13, with blond hair and blue eyes. He wanted the real thing but was also interested in pornography. He also suggested they might make their own films. On March 13, he wrote to Officer Rodrigues: ``When I mentioned that we could make our own, I was only half serious. Unfortunately, I don't have `raw' materials needed to produce something, but I sure wish I did. Although I guess if I had the materials, I wouldn't care about any videos!!! Depending on your morals and such, I guess we could go find the necessary ingredients, but that would be {real} kinky!!! Of course, by now you probably think that I'm a real nut case, but what the hey, at least I'm honest, right??'' The scheme, as it emerged, with the encouragement of the police officer, was for Lambey to purchase or abduct a minor boy, hold him in captivity for up to two weeks, videotape acts of sexual molestation and the ultimate murder of the child, and thereafter dispose of the body. The financial rewards from marketing the video were also discussed. - Again the Florida angle - Lambey advised Rodrigues that he knew someone in Florida in the business of selling minors. He thought the price to be approximately $12,000 per child, with a $5,000 refund if the child were returned. He claimed to be in weekly phone contact with this child-seller. Both the late-1970s Atlanta Child Murders, and the recent Satanic killings in Matamoros, Mexico, had a Florida angle, as did the Hand of Death cult. In a face-to-face meeting with undercover police from San Jose, Lambey implicated Depew in his plans. He reported Depew to be a sado-masochist who liked to subject his victims to ``cigarette burns and choking them till they pass out. Slap them around when they wake up and starting all over again. Hanging them real slowly.'' He also reported that Depew had admitted to murdering a 17-year-old runaway after having had sexual intercourse with him. Depew later met with the policemen himself, and confirmed his interest in participating in making a snuff film of a 12-to-13-year-old boy. - The case of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald - In 1979, Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald was convicted of the murder of his wife and two children, and sentenced to life imprisonment. There are many indications that he did not receive a fair trial, but of interest here is the fact that, whatever the guilt or innocence of Dr. MacDonald, the existence of a Satanic network, connected to drug trafficking and operating on Army bases was definitely established. The murders occurred on Feb. 17, 1970. The brutal slaughter appeared to be a repeat of the Manson Family atrocities. Dr. MacDonald was serving as a doctor with the Army Special Forces unit at Fort Bragg, N.C. He was sleeping on his living room couch when, he claims, a band of hippies invaded his house, assaulted him, and then killed his wife and two children, who were sleeping upstairs. His wife and children received multiple stab wounds, and the word ``pig'' was written in blood on one of the walls. MacDonald reports that he heard chanting to the effect of ``Acid is groovy, kill the pigs.'' Dr. MacDonald, who himself received several stab wounds, survived the brutal assault only to be accused of the crime. This, despite the fact that MacDonald was able to describe the members of the group, particularly one young woman who had long blond hair and wore a floppy hat. These people were seen in the vicinity of the MacDonald house at the time of the crime. Despite circumstantial evidence which supported Dr. MacDonald's story, he became the prime suspect. The search for a band of Manson-type killers was not pursued. The case initially came under the jurisdiction of the Army's Criminal Investigations Division (CID). The CID was ill-equipped to deal with forensic evidence, as was proven when the FBI forensic laboratories were brought into the picture. More striking was the fact that the crime scene itself was tampered with, when a shocked soldier attempted to straighten the living room. The neatness of the room seemed, at first, to belie the doctor's story that he had been assaulted. On Sept. 12, 1970, the case against MacDonald was dropped by the Army, because of insufficient evidence. Despite this, investigation continued--still targeting MacDonald. On Aug. 1, 1974, the Department of Justice directed the FBI to investigate the unsolved murders, and six months later, on Jan. 24, 1975, MacDonald was indicted by a federal grand jury in North Carolina. Despite the fact that the doctor, with reason, claimed double jeopardy, the case came to trial on July 16, 1979. Dr. MacDonald was found guilty of two counts of second-degree murder, against his wife and one of his children, and one count of first-degree murder, and sentenced to three life terms, to be served consecutively. He won an appeal on the basis of denial of speedy trial, but this was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, and he is now serving his sentence. - The Satanic angle - Evidence substantiating the existence of a Satanic cult in the area, fitting Dr. MacDonald's description, was kept from the jury, on the pretext that this was hearsay. This included confessions by at least three members of the group that they had been involved in the killings. One member of what turned out to be Helen Stoeckley's Satanic circle at Fort Bragg, told friends that he had been involved with the murder. He died of an apparent drug overdose. (Stoeckley was accurately described by MacDonald as wearing a floppy hat and having long blond hair. She in fact frequently wore such a blond wig.) She told many friends that she had been present at the crime scene. She said that she and some fellow drug users had begun to dabble in Satanism. On the night of the crime, they were all ``high'' on drugs. According to her account, they had intended to frighten the MacDonalds but the situation went out of control. Stoeckley described herself as a witch to friends and family. She died in suspicious circumstances of apparent sudden liver failure, after she gave a taped confession to the defense. She had a young child, whom she cared for carefully; yet when she died her child was left unattended. It is surprising that she had not sufficient forewarning that she was seriously ill, to have provided care for her child. Indeed, she was in the midst of cooking a meal when she apparently collapsed. She was, in fact, a police informer who had been responsible for over 100 prosecutions of drug offenders. She was the child of Army personnel on the base, and was herself a drug addict. She privately admitted to her presence on the crime scene during the murders, but requested immunity before she would implicate herself further. This was denied by the government. Stoeckley described how drugs were being transported from Vietnam to U.S. Army bases, hidden in the stomachs of dead soldiers. Only after the drugs had been removed would the soldiers' bodies be sent home to their families. According to Stoeckley, the drug network had a high level of protection. She also described how many members of the network were also involved in Satanic cult activity. According to her, this Satanic cult operated covens across the country that had been threatening her with death should she talk. From the time the murder was reported, the Army made no attempt to apprehend the criminals described by MacDonald. Not even the simple step of setting up a roadblock was taken, although, according to witness reports, had this been done, individuals fitting MacDonald's description might well have been immediately apprehended. This raises the question of whether there a coverup was immediately put in place to protect Army top brass who were implicated in the drug trafficking. It is of interest that Michael Aquino served at this base soon after the murders.