Weak attempts to link the Connecticut shootings to Devil worship

Tabloids, Christian websites, and YouTube auteurs are attempting to link Newtown, Connecticut, killer Adam Lanza to Satanism - on the softest evidence you can possibly imagine.

A Daily Mail article quotes Trevor L. Todd, a "former classmate" of Lanza, as saying that Adam once had a "Satan worshiping" web page with a banner that featured the word Devil in a red, "Gothic-style" font. This vaguely-remembered website supposedly created by a middle school student is the only evidence presented to suggest that Lanza was a Satanist. To date, the web page's existence hasn't even been confirmed.
The article goes on to claim that FBI investigators "strongly believe he made use of devil-worshiping and suicide sites and boasted of his murder plans on message forums". No source is given for this information.

World Net Daily doesn't have any more solid information than the Daily Mail, but the writer of this article attempts to give the story some teeth by throwing in references to other murders committed by "Satanists". Aaron Klein even speculates about a possible Satanic conspiracy:

"Was Lanza part of a larger Satanic or ritualistic subculture locally or online in which he could have revealed his plans or could have even received support in preparing for the killings?"

Then he takes other media outlets to task for failing to report on the Satanic angle of the Aurora, Colorado shootings. "Although largely underreported, Satanic subculture and so-called devil worship has been a factor in numerous other mass killings, including the recent Batman shooting massacre."
At this point, Klein is forced to  concede that James Holmes wasn't actually a Satanist; he just liked the Joker as played by Heath Ledger a lot, and the Joker had Satanic attributes. You know, like every supervillain in every comic book ever.

Klein goes on to educate WND readers about other infamous "Satanic" murders, starting with the Manson Family killings:
"According to reports, Tate was originally selected to play the main character in her husband’s Rosemary’s Baby, a film about a pregnant woman who fears that her husband may have made a pact with neighbors to use her child as a human sacrifice in their occult rituals. Actress Mia Farrow ultimately got the role, while Tate did make a brief appearance in the film."
This is wrong on just about every level. Sharon Tate was never considered for the role of Rosemary in her husband's film. The film itself has absolutely nothing to do with the murders; the Tate/Polanski residence was targeted by Manson and his followers because Polanski and Tate were subletting the house from music producer Terry Melcher, a man Manson deeply resented for failing to turn him into a recording superstar.

Richard Ramirez is the next "Satanic" killer on the list, and he's the only one who really qualifies for inclusion. Ramirez did identify himself as a Satanist.
But Sean Sellers, the teenager who converted to Christianity in jail after murdering his parents? He may have promoted himself as a "reformed Satanist" who killed only because he was under the Devil's influence, but an examination of his criminal appeals tells a different story. Sellers was so desperate to escape the death penalty for crimes he admittedly committed that he pled diminished capacity due to demonic possession, and later claimed to have Multiple Personality Disorder. Sellers was a shrewdly manipulative man who knew exactly what he was doing at all times.

The last case Klein cites is the murder of Steven Newberry by a trio of teens, led by a charismatic thug named Jim Hardy. The killers practiced some rudimentary form of "Satanism" that mostly revolved around torturing and killing cats. The murder of their "friend" Newberry was a thrill killing that would have been committed with or without their childish attempts at devil worship.
Klein's efforts to lay the blame for Adam Lanza's crimes on Satanism are baseless. To call Lanza's evil deeds "Satanic" because he allegedly expressed interest in the Devil in his teens is just as absurd as labelling a murder "Christian" because the killer was once an altar boy.

Some Christians don't want to stop at blaming Satanism for the massacre, though. They also want to blame the victims' parents and even God himself, arguing that mass murder of 6-year-olds is God's just punishment for "kicking God out of schools". In the video below, Christian rapper Tireo tells us that God granted Satan permission to "demonize" Adam Lanza so that he would murder children, but the media won't disclose this because Adam was white. Also, the victims were handpicked (by God?) because their parents "had sin in their lives."

Blaming Satan

Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, has stated that Satan was behind last week's murders in Newtown, Connecticut. 

Tragic events like the mass murder of schoolchildren certainly have an evil aura, and it isn't out of line to label the killer's actions as evil, in my opinion.
But to attribute the killer's actions directly to Satan, as Wildmon has done, is problematic. First of all, it's entirely possible that Adam Lanza had an emotional or mental disorder that interfered with his ability to feel empathy for others, manage his emotions, or control his impulses. The notion that mental illness is caused by demonic infestation or Satanic influence, promoted by Alex Jones and others, is positively Medieval and has no place in an informed, educated society like our own. It will not benefit the mentally ill, their caregivers, mental health professionals, or family members to fob the blame off on the Devil. If Lanza was not mentally ill, then he was fully responsible for his crimes, and no one else (including Satan) deserves even a shred of the blame for what he chose to do.

The West Memphis Three are OUT!

This is a beautiful day: The day that I remove the "Free the West Memphis Three" posters from my blogs. After spending the entirety of their young adulthoods in prison, Jessie Misskelley, Jason Baldwin, and Damien Echols have been freed after a plea deal. Sadly, the deal prevents them from suing for wrongful prosecution or anything else related to their false convictions, and it is incredibly unlikely that West Memphis investigators will ever admit their mistakes and search for the real killer or killers.
Not just three, but six boys' worlds were destroyed by the murders of Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers. Now that the West Memphis Three have some justice, let's see some justice for the three boys who lost their lives. Enough time has been wasted.

I'm dismayed by some of the media coverage of this. For instance, ABC News posted a video with the sub-headline "Three men convicted of killing three boys in a satanic cult ritual are set free." Really? The prosecution couldn't present any evidence of a Satanic ritual, because there wasn't any. At all.

*Refreshing Subtlety*

That venerable gray lady of the London press, The Sun, has printed a sober and thoughtful piece on a series of Satanic crimes in Russia, titled "Knifed 666 times each and eaten". It explores the nuances of Satanically inspired murders and teenage violence with its characteristic reserve, while conveying only the most salient facts.

"The pals, three girls and a boy aged 16 or 17, were all Goths."

"Locals said they all knew [alleged leader Nikolai] Ogolobyak, whose grandmother revealed he had sung in the local church choir as a boy."

"The dad of victim Andrei [Sorokin] said: 'My son said he had Goths and Satanists among his friends'."

"Moscow alone has 15 [Satanic cults] whose worship is thought to revolve around symbols such as 666, an upturned five-pointed star within a circle and the swastika."

"Devil worshippers believe in putting themselves first and their core values include pride, indulgence, ambition and meeting sexual desires." [emphasis in original]

"In Britain, about 400 people list their religion as Satanism. Followers meet at a “Grotto” for rituals with candles and swords run by witches and warlocks."

Blogger Selwyn Duke at The New American, commenting on the case, warns us not to dismiss the Satanic angle of these horrific murders, as morally relativistic and "philisophically sloppy" people like me are inclined to do. "To them, these are just some bad kids who did a very bad thing. End of story."

Well, yes, it is the end of the story. The Sun and other tabloids may milk it for a few more days, but it's already clear that if these teens are guilty of killing other teens, their Goth sensibilities and half-baked attempts at Satanism had little to do with their crimes. Anyone disturbed and amoral enough to murder others in cold blood doesn't need Satan as an excuse. (Case in point: The "Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs", three non-Satanist teenaged boys, brutally tortured and killed about 20 people just for the hell of it.)
Also, there have been more Christian serial killers and mass murderers than Satanic ones. But plain old Judeo-Christian crime doesn't make suitably lurid newspaper material, just as real breasts on a Sun girl will never do.

And with that thought, I return to The Sun to read their captivating, front-page thought piece on the global implications of Katy Perry's new bikini.

Blood-Drinking Werewolf Pedophile?

From the Halifax Chronicle Herald: Now acquaintances of accused killer Jeremy Steinke (see post below) are telling the press that he drank blood and considered himself a werewolf. People seem to be more interested in his quirks than in why he was dating a 12-year-old and why he allegedly helped kill her entire family.

Girl and Pedophile Boyfriend Allegedly Slew Entire Family; Girl Wore Dark Eyeliner

Top news in Canada is the murder of a family (parents and 10-year-old son) in Medicine Hat, Alberta and the arrest of the couple's 12-year-old daughter and her 23-year-old boyfriend, Jeremy Allen Steinke, for the murders. The names of the family have not been released, nor have the results of the autopsies.

The tender age of the girl and the apparent pedophilia of her "boyfriend", combined with the barbarity of the crime, should be enough to shock and titillate the public, but 940AM in Montreal isn't content with that. Under the headline, "Accused Goth killers make first appearance in Medicine Hat court", they also had to point out that the pair allegedly met on a Goth/vampire chatroom, and that the girl had taken to wearing "heavy eyeliner and makeup".

Is this important? Do child exploitation, alleged mass murder by a pubescent girl, and flights from justice actually merit less attention than the fact that a young teenager might have been experimenting with a Goth lifestyle? Does the media need to sieze on this (irrelevant) aspect of the case just to keep the story fresh while they're awaiting more details?
More importantly - do we, the media consumers, need to buy into this B.S.?

Death Metal Murders and Suicides

I'm currently reading Michael Moynihan's book Lords of Chaos, a study of the most extreme forms of heavy metal music and their evolution (or devolution) into quasi-Satanic "black metal" in Europe, the UK, and Scandinavia during the late '80s. In the early '90s, Norwegian black metal fans and musicians torched Medieval churches throughout the country and indulged in a lot of other Satanic weirdness. But the chaos didn't end there. To this day, gruesome acts of violence are being attributed to death/black metal musicians...

Italy's "Beast of Satan" Murders

From BBC online, "Investigating the Death Metal Murders" by Sam Bagnall, 25 Nov. 2005: "One man's relentless search for his missing son led him to uncover one of the most shocking crimes in post-war Italy - a tale of Satanism and violence that has gripped the country for more than a year."

On a January night in 1998, 16-year-old friends Fabio Tollis and Chiara Marino drank together at a Milan heavy-metal pub called The Midnight. They never returned home. Police presumed they were runaways, as did some of their friends.
Fabio's dad, Michele Tollis, began attending metal concerts throughout Europe searching for his son, passing out fliers with descriptions of the two missing teens. No luck.
If the stuff found in Chiara's bedroom (human hair, teeth, and fingernails, along with instructions on how to use them in Satanic rituals) was any indication, she had been interested in Satanism; on a hunch, Mr. Tollis decided to pursue this line of inquiry. He knew that death metal and Satanism are inextricably linked, and he also suspected that some of his son's friends knew more about his disappearance than they were telling him. For 6 years, he carefully tracked their activities in the hopes of finding a chink in the armour of silence.

In January 2004, Andrea Volpe admitted to the brutal murder of his ex-girlfriend in Somma Lombardo. He had shot Mariangela Pezzotta, 27, in the face - then buried her alive in her greenhouse. His new girlfriend and a plumber named Niccola Sapona allegedly assisted in the murder.
Mr. Tollis recognized the young man's name at once: Volpe had played in a death metal band called Beasts of Satan with Chiara and his son. He went to the carabinieri with his voluminous files, and they agreed to question Volpe about the '98 disappearances.
Volpe confessed to killing Fabio and Chiara, and led authorities to their remains. But that wasn't the end of the story.
Fabio's school chum and bandmate, Mario Maccione, admitted beating Fabio to death with a hammer. According to witnesses, Niccola Sapona had also been present. Chiara and Fabio had been killed on the night of a full moon for reasons that remain unclear; the killers were on cocaine, and believed Chiara was an incarnation of the Virgin Mary who had to be sacrificed to the devil. The pair was beaten, stabbed, and possibly buried alive in a shallow grave upon which Sapona urinated and danced.
The Beasts of Satan had also terrorized drummer Andrea Bontade into suicide. About 8 other suicides, disappearances, and murders have since been linked to the Beasts of Satan, which operated as both a band and a Satanic sect, allegedly led by the plumber Niccola Sapona.

The revelations sparked fears of Satanism and Satanic crime throughout Italy, leading cult-watchers to guesstimate the number of Satan-worshipping cults in the country at anywhere from 5000 to 600,000. Father Aldo Buonaito called for a ban on death metal and set up a helpline for people concerned about Satanism, while famed exorcist Gabriel Amorth warned that the Catholic Church's downplaying of Satan's power has resulted in the recent spread of Satanism. Carlo Climati, a specialist in Italian youth culture, believes death metal itself leads directly to organized Satanism and criminal activities.

The "Satanic" Murder of a Nun by 3 Girls

Chiavenna, Italy: On the night of June 6-7, 2000, three teen girls tricked 61-year-old nun Teresina Mainetti into an isolated area by pretending one of their friends was pregnant and in need of help. Then they forced her to kneel on the ground, insulted her, and stabbed her 19 times with 2 knives. ("Teens Said to Confess to Nun Murder", AP Online, June 30/00)
The girls were arrested 22 days later, and intially said they committed the murder out of boredom (Chiavenna is a small town). Later they said the nun was a sacrifice to Satan. When police searched their homes they found black metal albums, including some by Varg "The Count" Vikernes, a neo-Nazi/pagan incarcerated for the 1993 murder of bandmate Oystein Aarseth. Vikernes was also responsible for the arsons of half a dozen cathedrals in Norway. Today, from prison, he promotes "nationalistic paganism" centered on worship of Odin, one-eyed god of war and death, and insists the church-burnings were carried out in protest of Christian suppression of the ancient pagan religions. He has also adopted the surname Quisling. (Moynihan, Lords of Chaos)

The Slayer and Judas Priest Lawsuits

Though Slayer is not a black metal band in the European/Scandinavian mold, it was sued in 1996 by the parents of a murdered teenager, who said she was killed in a Satanic ritual inspired by the group's songs. 15-year-old Elyse Pahler of California was stabbed and stomped to death by 3 male "friends" (15 and 16) in a eucalyptus grove in San Luis Obispo. The boys were into drugs and Slayer.
The case was dismissed in 2001.

British band Judas Priest (also not a black metal band, but frequently scapegoated by anti-occult activists) faced a similar lawsuit in 1986, a year after two Nevada teens entered into a suicide pact. One boy killed himself, the other blew his face off with a shotgun. The parents' lawyers declared the Judas Priest songs the boys had been listening to on the fateful day contained backwards messages ("backmasking") of death and destruction that drove the them to have suicidal thoughts (they claimed the words "do it" could be heard chanted repeatedly throughout one song, but this proved to be incorrect).
The parents also sued CBS Records.
The case went to court in Reno in 1990. A foregone conclusion: Judas Priest and CBS Records were exonerated (you'll never convince me the kids in Heavy Metal Parking Lot were Satanists).

Rock groups that used faux-Satanic gimmicks and props were frequently cited by Christians as purveyors of the occult throughout the '70s and '80s, as were mainstream pop groups like the Beatles.
Strangely, bands whose members actually did dabble in the occult (the Stones, Zeppelin, Blondie, etc.) were infrequently mentioned by the Satan-watchers, and the hardcore death metal rockers who spewed blood-&-guts hatred and inspired countless criminals in Europe were totally unknown to them (for example, G.G. Allin was never mentioned). Opposition focused on groups that really weren't diabolically inspired at all. For instance, Ozzy Osbourne's circus-geek stunts - gnawing the heads off chickens and so forth - were widely perceived as a weird sort of annimal sacrifice, the acts of a deranged or depraved man. But as the TV reality show revealed, the reality of Ozzy is infinitely more mundane.

Satanic Suicides In Europe and the UK

Concurrent with the black metal blight, there was a rash of "Satanic suicides" among European teenagers. In one of the more disturbing cases, three boys (14, 17, and 18) who allegedly dabbled in Satanism threw thsemlves off the 150-year-old Goeltzschtal Bridge near Reichenbach, the tallest brick bridge in the world (and already infamous for suicides) in August 2001. The oldest and youngest boys had their feet tied together. A suicide note was found at the bottom of the bridge.
Some observers speculated that despair and occult activity was a particular problem for young people in eastern German, people who had lost a sense of security and stability in the wake of communism.
As with black metal bands, some of eastern Europe's Satanic sects also had neo-Nazi or fascist aspects.

In March 2005, 29-year-old Gareth Bonetto hung himself in his Cardiff home after spending some time in a mental facility. He had formed the death metal band Blood Retch 3 years earlier, performing around Europe and the UK as "Mad Eddie Richards". Bonetto's father, Lawrence, noted that his son was an entirely different person when he was with the band, reveling in pain and darkness. ("'Evil' Music Blamed for Suicide", bbc.co.uk, Dec. 7/05)

Satanic Murder in Europe
In June 2004, Satanists Daniel and Manuela Ruda stabbed Frank Haagen 66 times in the course of a Satanic ritual carried out in their flat in Bochum (in Germany's Ruhr region), supposedly on the devil's orders. Throughout the trial, the pair defiantly made faces at cameras and showed no remorse for their crime. Experts said they both suffered severe narcissistic personality disorder. They were sentenced to 15 and 13 years in a psychiatric ward.
The pair practiced a crude form of "Goth Satanism", not religious Satanism. Manuela says she was called by Satan at age 14, and became a practicing vampire in London. At the time of the murder, she slept in a coffin. Daniel sold car parts alongside his victim.

Sociology professor Maria Macioti of La Sapienza University: "In the past, there were intellectual Satanists. Today, you'd have difficulty finding people who can write two sentences." (Fortean Times, "Satan Strikes Again", April '06)

There are still oodles of intellectual Satanists out there, but sadly they're always being overshadowed by the far less cerebral attention-seekers.