Friday, March 29, 2013

"The Ultimate Evil" Revisited by Starship


I have finally read in its entirety the hardcover version of Maury Terry’s THE ULTIMATE EVIL from 1987 and the relevant updates from the 1989 paperback.

Matt Prokes had recently posted about this and quoted extensively about the various alleged Manson connections.  I had very low expectations for this book, thinking that Terry was basically a loon in the mold of Mae Brussels. But it really is true that one should withhold judgment about any work until actually reading the work in question.

It is fairly well written and is a very interesting read. It makes a compelling case toward proving that the Son of Sam murders were indeed a conspiracy, that David Berkowitz was not the lone gunman and that the police and some of the DAs, once they had their suspect, decided to end their investigations quickly. Such was the mood from the fear created by the .44 killings.

Terry’s wider premise is that this conspiracy is related to the Process Church of the Final Judgment or, at the least, a satanic cult offshoot of it, and that this conspiracy is also responsible for the Manson Murders in 1969, the ritual murder of Arlis Perry at Stanford in 1974, and the rape and murders of at least three Long Island girls in the mid-1980s.

As stated above, Terry’s research including witness statements and acknowledged sources have indeed ‘proven’ that Berkowitz did not and could not have acted alone in all of the .44 attacks.  A job well done!  And although it is very interesting to consider the case he tries to make that a nation-wide, indeed a world-wide satanic conspiracy is responsible for all of the murders above and more, and probably is still active today, is where he falls short.

The key for Terry to connect all this is to prove the existence of the mysterious figure who we’ve come to know as Manson II. I was under the impression that the name Manson II was coined by Terry himself. I was wrong: it was David Berkowitz who brought that name to light, claiming that he was an occult superstar assassin who was once associated with Charles Manson and that he was sent to New York to participate in the Son of Sam attacks, that he perpetrated one of the attacks and assisted in the videotaping of the last attack. Further, while he was in New York, Manson II claimed that he had committed the Arlis Perry murder at Stanford.

Adam GoRightly of all people has this to say on the subject, from his book DEATH CULTS:

In The Ultimate Evil, author Maury Terry contended that the Son of Sam killer, David Berkowitz, was a member of “The Children”, a satanic cult based out of Venice, California, with links to the military and intelligence establishments. According to Terry, “The Children” is a splinter group of The Process Church of the Final Judgment, which--although officially disbanded some 30 years ago--continues to operate secretly in six major U.S. cities. Terry claims that The Process has changed its name many times, along the way accumulating millions of dollars in real estate holdings, and operates from a “remote enclave” in New York. According to Terry, Berkowitz--though admittedly involved in some of the Son of Sam murders--was set up as a fall guy by the “The Children” for the entire series of murders, much is the same manner that Charles Manson may have been similarly manipulated in the Tate-LaBianca murders. In his treatise, Terry accused The Process Church of Hitler worship, animal sacrifice, drug running, kiddie porn, murder, and complicity in Son of Sam. Process apologists argue that Terry took Process founder Robert DeGrimston's symbolic teachings too literally, and that The Ultimate Evil suffers from poor logic and dubious sources, and is littered with “red herrings”. From these sources--among them, Berkowitz himself--Terry learned that one Son of Sam murder was videotaped, and that the cameraman, Ronald Sisman, was subsequently murdered by cult members when they went to recover the Son of Sam snuff film. Terry pinned this murder on a mysterious figure dubbed Manson II, whom he later identified as William Mentzer, an “occult superstar” and hit man who moved through the same late 1960’s milieu of sex, drugs and porn as Manson, and who had been intimate with Tate-LaBianca murder victim, Abigail Folger. Terry quoted his source on Mentzer/Manson II as “someone in the intelligence community.”

This is where it gets dicey. Terry has an unnamed source who he calls 'reliable' who claims that in September 1967 he had dinner with Manson, Abigail Folger, Shorty Shea, and another person in a San Francisco seafood restaurant. This same source also claims that Manson and Shorty were so tight that they even traveled together on a road trip to visit a commune in Seattle. Something rather credibly debunked here recently in a response to Matt Prokes's posts.

So does this sound funny to you?  Does to me.

Much is made also regarding cult connections because of Abigail Folger contributing $10,000 to the Straight Theatre in San Francisco where Bobby Beausoleil played with the Magick Powerhouse (Aleister Crowley spelling) and Beausoleil’s association with Kenneth Anger and the film LUCIFER RISING.

SO, does all of this prove anything?  I think not. Perhaps it is all coincidence. To me it would go a long way if William Mentzer could be proven to be Manson II. For this to happen, an association with our Manson needs to be made. I have not been able to come up with anything solid on this. Any news or relevant leads would be welcome.

A word about coincidence: My God I hate coincidences, and am always suspicious when they occur. However Stephen King has made some good points about them, causing me to reluctantly have to consider that sometimes some things do indeed happen inexplicably and converge:

"The chain of events seems outrageous, but let me tell you a story. This happened a couple of weeks ago in the Midwest. This guy won the lottery, he won a million dollars or something on the lottery. Maybe it was multimillions. But you know how it is, it’s a great human interest story. So the press comes and this film crew from one of the local stations says to him, “We want to recreate you winning the lottery.”

Q:  You know where this is going, right?

A:  I’m not sure.

Q:  Bear with me. So they went to the store where he had bought the scratch ticket and won the million dollars. And they filmed, and he scratched the ticket and he said, “Holy — I just won another $100,000.” Now, that’s the sort of thing where if you’re not there, if you’re not part of it, you just say to yourself, “This is just absurd.” But it happens all the time..  And yet you don’t really believe in coincidences, do you?

A:  Yes, I do...The book I wrote (11/22/63)...The coincidences are minimized by this idea that the past tries to echo itself over and over again. But it’s not fate when somebody wins the lottery. Some guy picks numbers, or the computer picks numbers, and those numbers come up. You know? It’s a coincidental world."

Further, the three men convicted of the Lynbrook, Long Island murders were actually released from prison after DNA testing found them ‘innocent', thus rendering the cases of the three Long Island girls as unsolved.

Another interesting note is that William Mentzer was convicted of the murder of Roy Radin-rumored to be the head of the Son of Sam Cult-in the Cotton Club murder of 1983. LASO detective Charles Guenther is associated with this case as well as the Tate-LaBianca cases.

Finally, in an attempt to gain another perspective, I contacted an author of a Manson related fictional work I admire to ask if he thought any of this credible. I do not want to mention his name because I did not ask for nor did he offer me his permission to publish his comments, but he was not at all familiar with any of this, so there goes that. As for Maury Terry, no one seems to have heard from him for a while. I wish he would come out though because it seems that he could begin a whole new connection to this what with the Gilgo Beach murders and the Smiley Face murders (if that's what they are) still unsolved.

Links:

William Mentzer: http://murderpedia.org/male.M/m/mentzer-william.htm

Missing Long Island girls:
http://voices.yahoo.com/cold-case-missing-girl-opened-lynbrook-7171364.html?cat=8

http://www.centurionministries.org/cases/dennis-halstead-john-kogut-and-john-restivo/

Roy Radin:
 http://articles.latimes.com/1991-07-23/news/mn-296_1_cotton-club

Arlis Perry:
http://www.greatplainsexaminer.com/2012/06/25/the-killing-of-arlis-perry/

Smiley Face Murders?:
http://lawsofsilence.blogspot.com/2008/05/smiley-face-killers.html

Gilgo Beach:
 http://www.newsday.com/news/breaking/the-gilgo-beach-murder-victims-1.4295091

Stephen King interview:
 http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/errol-morris-interviews-stephen-king/

19 comments:

LynyrdSkynyrdBand said...

Thanks Starship!

Great review, and well-written as always.

St. Circumstance said...

Great review and as usual Starship is a voice of reason and fact regarding this case and this subject...

Starship your book reviews area always very good and people should take your recommendations very seriously...

Now lol

I have read this book many times over the years and I have read many other books involving many of these cases.

The Son of Sam stuff is very compelling, and indeed the NYPD reopened the case based on some of this information.

the rest of it is too loose for me. I am quite sure Radin was not affiliated with the process. He was killed by Laney Jacobs over a drug burn and a perceived snub regarding her participation in the making of the Cotton Club movies.

If one digs further they will find that Terry and Sanders used each other as sources way too often. He says that Shorty had a dinner with Manson and Folger- but in all these years nobody else has ever confirmed it, and they never cite any sources for any of the Manson stuff that can be checked or confirmed....

Terry had a bit of fame over this book and they did a few TV shows about it ( Gerlado even got on board)...

the first three quarters of the book are very interesting and he spends most of it on Son of Sam. then he tries in the last 1/4 to tie it all together with a bunch of other cases in a very flimsy way...

didn't buy any of the Manson stuff personally. I know the story of Roy Radin as well as I know the Manson case and it had nothing to do with Process...

do believe that something was going on though bigger than Dave Berkowitz though...

the book starts off talking about the murder of arliss Perry in Stanford and then sort of makes you forget all about her, until an interview takes place many, many years later in New York in Berkowitz's cell, and the interviewer is going through one of Berkowitz's books and finds a note about Arliss Perry scribbled in the margin....

how could he have known about that?

freaky! as well- the two brothers who are reportedly in cahoots with Berkowitz both died semi- mysteriously and one of them died in the North Dakota town where Arliss Perry was from...

these brothers were name Carr, and they had a sister named Wheat- they lived next door to Berkowitz and there dad owned the infamous dog who Berkowqitz said drove him to do the killings...

several references were made to the Carr family in the son of Sam letters to Jimmy Breslin and law enforcement....

Very fascinating stuff indeed

but very highly not related to Charlie and crew in any way

St. Circumstance said...

Shreck brought up the Mafia ties when he was on Brian Davis show and in his book...

Radin had an " uncle" who was connected who looked after him after his father died, but was never involved in any of his California exploits and was more or less and an advisor when he was in the New York area. his only participation in the cotton club venture was to give occasional advice not to get involved with dug dealers which Roy never took...

The guy Laney Jacobs introduced him to in hopes of getting the movie made was Robert Evans- who had just come off a major Coke bust and was slipping in Hollywood circles. He had a couple of friends in Vegas who were brothers and loosely connected, and when he thought he was in trouble he asked for help and they declined....

so to say the mob was directly involved is not true at all...

these people were coke heads and trying to cut each other out of involvement in a movie they all wanted to make... drugs and greed- not the process or the mob...

but there were some mob people on the peripheral- which is enough for most authors to reach for more saucy conclusions...

they have to see books after all, and it makes an interesting story more interesting...

But when you know they have gotten one conclusion wrong for sure- it makes it harder to accept everything else they are putting forth to you as fact in my opinion. I take the stories with a grain of salt and stick to the stuff which can be proven....

the facts of this case are interesting enough on their own merits...

St. Circumstance said...

last comment- the guy who Terry calls " Manson 2"

according to the testimony in court of the actual guy who killed Radin and was with metger when it went down...

- a man named Alex Marti who was truly a maniac and scary guy-

Metzger ( Manson 2) had to get drunk on wine to fire his gun at the already dead Radin...

everyone who knew them says that Marti was the animal. both of them had a a history of working for Larry flint as bodyguards. not chasing around California as members of the process...


One of four "Cotton Club" defendants named in the 1983 execution of Broadway promoter Roy Radin was charged Tuesday with a second and apparently unrelated murder. Former security guard Alex Marti, who is already fighting the Radin murder charge in a preliminary hearing under way in Los Angeles Municipal Court, was charged in the unrelated robbery and killing of Rene Vega on Aug. 4, 1987. He and two co-defendants, Scott Hadley Ashley and Rod Brennan Columbo, are scheduled to be arraigned Thursday on murder charges in the Vega case.



Mrstormsurge said...

Great stuff!!!

Unknown said...

Very good job Starship.
When I did my posts on this subject I turned the cyberworld upside down looking for contact info on Maury Terry.
No-one knows how to get in touch with him.

Unknown said...

St. Circumstance said...the two brothers who are reportedly in cahoots with Berkowitz both died semi- mysteriously

John 'wheaties' Carr and Michael Carr.
Both SONS OF SAM Carr.

Kimchi said...

Great review Starship!

Matt is right, you can't find a trace of Maury Terry anywhere...

I read The UE years ago and it raised my interest in what happened to the Process Church..

I came upon this website "The Dog Press" and a very good report by "Ms. Jade" who apparently did a lot of research of the "Best Friends" Animal Foundation in Utah.

She claims that in 1993 the Process Church members founded this organization and now it is a multi-million dollar animal welfare agency...

She says the Best Friends Animal Society, aka The Process Church of the Final Judgement, aka the Four-P Movement, aka The Foundation Church of the Millennium, aka The Foundation Faith of God are one of the same.

Mary Ann DeGrimston died on Nov. 14, 2005 at 74 years old. At the time this article was written, Robert DeGrimston was a business consultant in New York. They had divorced many years prior.

A lot of her research involved M. Terry and Ed Saunders and much of what you evaluated is in this article....

It's a two part series but quite interesting and detailed.

Part one:
http://www.thedogpress.com/Columns/BestFriends1-06101-Jade.asp

Part two:
http://www.thedogpress.com/columns/bestfriends2-06112-jade.asp

The Cafritz Foundation was a donor in 1994:

http://www.bestfriendsfoundation.org/DonorThanks.html

oo-ee-oo

St. Circumstance said...

Hey Kimchi- that is true!!

Maryann has passed away but she ran that animal shelter with another former process leader she got together with after divorcing Robert...

St. Circumstance said...

hey Matt P!

Unknown said...

Saint,I told L/S awhile ago that you'd be back.

St. Circumstance said...

I hope your not mad lol

Unknown said...

No reason for anyone to be mad...ever.
I just knew you wouldn't be able to resist posting again.
Resistance is futile.

St. Circumstance said...

apparently lol

good to see you

Unknown said...

Posted this on my old thread but just in case a few of you missed it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JepFcuZVuo

investigative reports:son of sam speaks.
theres also a link to a pdf of the book a few pages back.

CarolMR said...

Thanks for the review, Starship. I read this book when it first came out many years ago. I lived in NYC at the time of the Son of Sam murders and this book was the scariest I had ever read. I don't remember, but weren't there several SOS victims who had contracts put out on them, according to Terry? They weren't random shootings? I think the first victim, Donna Lauria, and one of the later victims, Christine Freund, were two of them.

Doc Sierra said...

This book is probably the most interesting true crime book that I've ever read. I don't buy some of the Satanic cult stuff but it's a very interesting read nevertheless. I do believe that the Carr brothers were involved in the Son of Sam murders.
Remember the great Satan scare of the 80s?
People said KISS stood for Knights In Satan's Service and AC/DC stood for Antichrist/Devil's Children.... I saw an interview with Angus and Malcolm Young of AC/DC and they said they got their name from a switch on their sister's sewing machine... I laughed my ass off......

katie8753 said...

Sorry "Charlies" but there's no way I'm buying the fact that Abigail Folger, Charlie & Shorty were BFF's. There's no evidence to support that theory.

Let's dig a little deeper in the well fellas......

katie8753 said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DndPqNz66Q8

Love ya!!! :)