Satanic ritual abuse and "Nephilim hybrids" in Oklahoma
On the August 16th-17th broadcast of Coast to Coast AM, guest L.A. Marzulli was nattering on about endtime prophecy, natural disasters, and a Great Deception involving aliens or the Illuminati or something. I wasn't really listening. Then he said this: According to two researchers who contacted him recently, at least two American women claiming to be victims of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA) have reported that the Satanists took them to Mount Hermon to be impregnated by fallen angels, which Marzulli referred to as the Nephilim of Genesis 6:4 (I'm not even sure if the Nephilim are supposed to be the same "sons of God" that mated with human women, or giants unrelated to the angels, or the offspring of angels and women, but that's a different post). The researchers who alerted Marzulli to this story had no vested interest in the matter, he insisted.
Marzulli then hinted that the hybrid offspring of these women have some connection to the alien breeding program, and that the Nephilim are keeping them at an offworld location.
"Will they bring them back at some point?" host George Noory asked.
"Yes, they will," Marzulli replied without hesitation.
So I Googled "Nephilim ritual abuse" and found a recent online radio interview with Pastor Doug Riggs, described as a friend of L.A. Marzulli. The subject was "Nephilim Mothers".
The name Doug Riggs was very familiar to me, but I couldn't recall precisely why. I rifled through some notes. Sure enough, I had jotted down a bit of info on the guy. A month or two ago I had stumbled upon a documentary from 1994, In Satan's Name, which originally aired on HBO. Riggs and his Morningstar Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, were featured in the film's most memorable and disturbing segment.
In 1994, no fewer than 14 members of Morningstar Church believed they had been brought up in Satanism, were horrifically abused as children, and had Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). All of this was based on repressed memories they recovered while in "counseling" with Pastor Riggs, during sessions lasting up to 19 hours in length. Please keep in mind that we're not talking about Okie bumpkins, here. These were reasonably intelligent, middle-class people who seriously should have known better.
To be fair, Morningstar didn't look like a cult. Riggs was a poised, handsome man with graying hair and a mellow voice. He spoke knowledgeably about psychology. It's no wonder that parishioners turned to him for pastoral counseling unrelated to Satanism or abuse (marital trouble, eating disorders, etc.).
From 1985 on, these counselees began recovering memories of horrific, lifelong ritual abuse at the hands of Satanists. Namely their own parents. And after 1991, when Riggs learned about MPD (now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder), they began to discover they had hundreds, even thousands, of separate personalities because of the Satanic ritual abuse. Riggs told them that every single one of their alters could be possessed by demons.
Counseling was conducted in a large room with a mattress on the floor, so counselees could go through abreactions without hurting themselves. Riggs would lay on top of the person when abreactions became intense, while helpers held the person's arms and legs. In this way, counseling and deliverance from demonic possession were merged into a single process. In one filmed session with a 30ish man, Riggs ordered a demon out of his body ("Explode the seals!") while the man writhed and convulsed on the mattress, growling obscenities.
Ultimately, Riggs concluded that all these people had been victimized by the same Satanic cult, led by a man named Joe (father of one of the parishioners, Pam), and that God had brought the victims together at Morningstar to be healed. Joe supposedly conducted powerful rituals for high government officials (including leaders of the Soviet Union), the Vatican, even heads of state. The narrator of In Satan's Name explains that in reality, Joe was a Nebraska salesman who had never left his home state. He died during filming.
Needless to say, the allegations tore apart families. A graceful, soft-spoken couple in their 60s, Jim and Fran Field, mourned the loss of their daughter Cynthia to what they considered a destructive, all-consuming cult.
This was as far as In Satan's Name took the story, but I soon learned that the situation at Morningstar was even stranger.
A testimony written in 1999 by 49-year-old Morningstar member Kim Campbell starts out as boilerplate SRA stuff. Campbell explains that Satanism, "as old as mankind itself", is a blend of Sumero-Akkadian/Babylonian mystery religions, Kabbala, and Paganism. "The culture is unbelievably and ingeniously evil; virutally everything about the culture is humanly damaging." Kim was subjected not only to "every abuse, trauma, and demonization imaginable within satanism", but to "medically-based mind control programming" at U.S. government facilities, clinics, and the Tavistock Institute (a favourite bugaboo in the world of conspiracy theory). Half of his waking preschool life was spent "being indoctrinated and incested". This realization came to him after 18 months of therapy with Pastor Riggs.
It isn't until page 7 of the testimony that shit gets seriously weird. Kim drops this bombshell: His real father was Edouard Philippe de Rothschild, and Kim was the "bastard son...of occult incest", indicating his mom Lula (who died in 1977) had some relation to the Rothschilds. Kim spent much of his childhood and adolescence on his dad's French estate, and was brought up in homosexual incest. He thought it was normal, even admirable.
Edouard despised God and loved humanity with equal passion. "Such was the true generational core of my ancestral iniquity and, being a Rothschild descendant, it was maximally demonized." As all Satanists do, Edouard introduced his son to Christianity, "with none other than Herr Josef Mengele himself coaching him over his shoulder." Kim was being groomed to infiltrate the Protestant church. As Riggs declared, the members of Morningstar Church "had come together to live in such a way as to hasten the Lord's coming for His Bride, but we also had been constituted in the occult to frustrate the will of God for the Church and bring the antichrist instead."
Wow. Just wow. Somehow, Doug Riggs convinced most of his 30-40 parishioners that they were multiple personalities programmed in Zedekiah's cave by the great families of Europe (plus Nazi doctors) to infiltrate the Christian Church and pave the way for the Antichrist, who will be a member of the Hapsburg family associated with the name "Alexander".
Instead, they found a saviour. Un-fracking-believable, no?
Let's go back to L.A. Marzulli for a moment. He also mentioned that Dr. Mengele was one of the originators of mind control. This is a very popular notion in conspiracy circles, but it makes little sense. Mengele was a geneticist, not a psychiatrist, and there's no evidence that he took even the slightest interest in psychology.
Marzulli also made reference to the work of I.E.D. Thomas, a Welsh minister who believes that UFOs and alien abductions are demonic manifestations, another guise of the Nephilim.
Back to Riggs and the Morningstar Satanists. Last April, Riggs and his wife were guests on The Byte Show, accompanied by about half a dozen of Riggs' SRA victims, to discuss the infiltration of Nephilim hybrids into society.
Riggs began the show with a reading of Matthew 24:37, in which it is stated that the coming of the Son of Man (Christ) will be just like the days of Noah. And what happened in the days of Noah? Nephilim mated with the daughters of Man. That's exactly what Riggs contends is happening now. Fallen angels - the "B'nai Elohim" - are interbreeding with human women, by force. He cited the work of I.E.D. Thomas. Hmm. Call me an asshole, but I'm starting to wonder if Marzulli's "two researchers" actually exist. Isn't it more likely that he got his eschatological Illuminati-Satanic-Nephilim info from his buddy Doug?
Two women gave their stories of being "Nephilim mothers".
Sally, a surprisingly chirpy woman, says that after joining Riggs' church, she began to journal and pray, and memories started surfacing. She shared her journal with the pastor, but after a time she felt God compelling her to share things directly, even her most frightening memory (the President wearing a gorilla costume). Through prayer and God's guidance, she learned to trust her emerging memories. She learned that she came from a royal bloodline, stamped with a certain iniquity and allied with Nazi doctors. Many years ago she revealed to Riggs that she had once given birth to a Nephilim child. She had been groomed literally from the womb to bond with the principality (spirit) that sired this child.
Riggs sat on the Nephilim hybrid revelation until this year. Now he's an expert on the subject. Riggs explains that Nephilim conception occurs at age 13, through an arcane genetic-engineering process (angels can't reproduce). Gestation is 4 months. Once the Nephilim hybrid sons have matured, their mothers are encouraged to become their lovers, carrying on the tradition of "incesting".
The second woman, Juliana, learned just this year that her recovered memories of giving birth to human sons were actually screen memories of bearing Nephilim sons. Like all the other Morningstar members, she was born to a European "royal family", then placed with relatives in the U.S. She was "incested" by the couple she called her mom and dad. She trusts her recovered memories because of their emotional intensity, a very poor indicator of whether a memory is true or false.
For the rest of the program, Riggs made a strenuous effort to show that the SRA victims' memories didn't come from him. Hilariously, though, he got them to explain how he doesn't tell them what to say by telling them what to say.
There is, of course, ample reason to suspect that the Satanic Illuminati stories did come from Riggs. First of all, there's that peculiar use of "incest" as a verb. While this may be common usage in the survivor community, I have come across it only a handful of times - and every single instance involved Riggs or one of his church members. Secondly, recovered memories of SRA have turned out time and time again to be unreliable (see the Ingram case for a particularly chilling example). Thirdly, some of the key details are whack. There was no Edouard Philippe de Rothschild, and if there had been he would have been Jewish. How, I wonder, would a Jewish Frenchman and a Catholic Nazi groom a child to infiltrate American Protestant churches? If the Satanic New World Order plot is closely linked with Hitler's plan to create Aryan supermen, as Riggs contends, why would a former Nazi help a Jewish man raise his illegitimate children? And Satanism notwithstanding, why would a Nazi and a Jew be hanging out together in the first place?
Then there's the fact that this has all happened before.
In the early '90s, right around the time Riggs was learning about MPD/DID, psychiatrist Bennett Braun opened a DID treatment unit at Chicago's Rush Presbyterian Hospital. Within a year, he and his colleagues had most of the patients convinced they were lifelong victims of Satanic cults, that their alter personalities still practiced Satanism, that they had ritually sacrificed and/or eaten other people, and that because of their Satanic affiliations they posed a mortal danger to their families, themselves, and other patients. Braun even told them that flowers sent to their rooms were coded mind-control messages from Satanists, with certain colours representing threats and commands.
As former patients like Pat Burgus and Mary Shanley later revealed (see the Frontline documentary The Search for Satan), the people in Braun's DID unit were so heavily medicated that stories of cannibalism and Satanic incest began to make sense to them. They have since renounced all their "recovered memories", and some filed lawsuits against Braun and the other doctors involved in their treatment.
What happened at Rush Presbyterian isn't much different from the spectacular displays of female hysteria that gripped Paris's Salpetriere Hospital in the late 19th century. Under the influence of Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot, numerous women underwent bizarre convulsions and contortions not unlike the symptoms of "demonic possession". When Charcot died in 1893, the symptoms abated, leading some of his colleagues to suspect that the hysteria had been iatrogenic in nature. Medical historian Edward Shorter supports this conclusion in his book A History of Psychiatry (1997, John Wiley & Sons).
Though Dissociative Identity Disorder is classified as a dissociative disorder in the DSM-IV, Multiple Personality Disorder was considered a form of hysteria. Specifically, it was Grande Hysterie - the very same condition suffered by Charcot's patients.
It's tremendously disturbing to me that Riggs has been carrying on this "counseling" for over 30 years without interruption, and that he is bringing a new generation of "victims" into his circle (his youngest, a Canadian named Sarah, is just 21 years old).
There's troubling evidence that the Nephilim hybrid/recovered memory nonsense has taken hold in at least one congregation in Australia. Riggs is also closely associated with Russ Dizdar, a pastor we'll examine in the next post.
Also, Riggs' belief system is rooted in a school of thought that sees all mental illness as demonic in nature, and/or indicative of repressed memories. He insists that before they enter into counseling with him, his parishioners read the work of Neil T. Anderson, a minister who preaches that 80% of Christians are "demonized" to some extent and that most (if not all) mental illness is a symptom of demonization. He offers "clinical deliverance" (exorcism) as treatment.
Showing posts with label recovered memories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recovered memories. Show all posts
Saturday, September 04, 2010
Monday, November 26, 2007
The Strange Saga of Pastor Don LaRose (AKA Mayor Williams)
The Mayor of Casterbridge meets "Satanic" Abduction and Brainwashing...
Nov. 2007 69-year-old Ken Williams had been the mayor of Centerton, Arkansas for 6 years when he announced that his name was really Don LaRose. 30 years earlier he had been LaRose (now 67 years old), a married preacher and father of two in Indiana, until members of a Satanic cult kidnapped him and "brainwashed" him to forget all about his former life. Then, in 1975, he was injected with a truth serum and suddenly remembered what the Satanists had done to him. Williams/LaRose says he underwent 5 years of therapy to recover the rest of his memories.
The disappearance of Reverend Don LaRose from Maine, New York, had made area headlines in 1975. According to a February 13/76 article in Christianity Today, some members of his congregation at the First Baptist Church even speculated that he had been abducted by angry Satanists who had written a nasty letter to him. However, when authorities located LaRose three months after his disappearance, they determined he had vanished voluntarily. (They didn't believe his bizarre story, that he had been hauled into the back of a van and "brainwashed" with a portable electroshock device attached to his forehead.) He had taken the name Bruce Kent Williams from a car-crash victim who died in 1958, but implied the Satanists had "given" him this identity; according to LaRose, he had simply woken up in Minneapolis as a homeless drunk named Bruce Williams, with no memory of his previous life as a Baptist minister. He became a baker's assistant in a downtown cafeteria, spending his free time at a mission. A preacher there recognized him as the missing New York pastor and arranged for LaRose's wife and father to pick him up.
LaRose was "happily" reunited with wife, Eunice, and their two daughters, but his former church washed its hands of him. And that seemed to be that.
The LaRoses moved to Indiana in '77. Don became pastor of Hessville Baptist Church in Hammond, and continued to tell his story about Satanic abduction and brainwashing, claiming he had recovered the memories of the events only after a dose of sodium amytal administered by Dr. Marvin DeHaan.
Those pesky Satanists just wouldn't leave him alone, though. In June 1980 he claimed to have seen them sneaking around his church, peeping in windows. On June 10, he told Eunice he was going to the church to meet someone. He didn't return home; 7 years later he was declared dead, and Eunice remarried. Despite his presumed death, family members continued to search for Don LaRose and hoped to learn his fate.
On the website LaRose admitted his second vanishing was deliberate, but only because the unknown Satanists threatened to murder his family if he didn't disappear. He bicycled away from home, bought a bus ticket to Wyoming, and became "Ken Williams".
In the early '80s "Ken Williams" popped up in Centerton, became a radio personality on KURM, and remarried. He was elected mayor in 2001. But earlier this year he put up a website about Pastor LaRose's disappearance, written from the perspective of LaRose. It contained an autobio of LaRose, a recap of the initial "abduction" ("may have been SATANIC inspired"), and his "amazing story of survival" after being forced to leave his family. A member of LaRose's family discovered the site, and it was easily traced to Williams. On Monday, November 19, the Benton County Daily Record phoned Mayor Williams to confirm his true identity. For a day he denied being LaRose, then "came clean" about his past to the newspaper.
LaRose has resigned as mayor of Centerton. Though he expressed interest in seeing his daughters, his grandchildren, and his 96-year-old father, he plans to remain in town with his current wife, and will continue to use the name Ken Williams. He is reportedly not under investigation.
LaRose/Williams says the people who abducted and brainwashed him were probably not Satanists, just "Satanically inspired".
Sources:
- Florida wftv.com article (erroneously gives pastor's name as "LeRose")
- "Being Don LaRose" by Eleanor Evans and Tracy Neal, Benton County Daily Record online, Nov. 21/07
- "The Two Reappearances of Don LaRose", Benton County Daily Record online, Nov. 22/07- http://www.donlarose.com/ (Williams' website)
Nov. 2007 69-year-old Ken Williams had been the mayor of Centerton, Arkansas for 6 years when he announced that his name was really Don LaRose. 30 years earlier he had been LaRose (now 67 years old), a married preacher and father of two in Indiana, until members of a Satanic cult kidnapped him and "brainwashed" him to forget all about his former life. Then, in 1975, he was injected with a truth serum and suddenly remembered what the Satanists had done to him. Williams/LaRose says he underwent 5 years of therapy to recover the rest of his memories.
The disappearance of Reverend Don LaRose from Maine, New York, had made area headlines in 1975. According to a February 13/76 article in Christianity Today, some members of his congregation at the First Baptist Church even speculated that he had been abducted by angry Satanists who had written a nasty letter to him. However, when authorities located LaRose three months after his disappearance, they determined he had vanished voluntarily. (They didn't believe his bizarre story, that he had been hauled into the back of a van and "brainwashed" with a portable electroshock device attached to his forehead.) He had taken the name Bruce Kent Williams from a car-crash victim who died in 1958, but implied the Satanists had "given" him this identity; according to LaRose, he had simply woken up in Minneapolis as a homeless drunk named Bruce Williams, with no memory of his previous life as a Baptist minister. He became a baker's assistant in a downtown cafeteria, spending his free time at a mission. A preacher there recognized him as the missing New York pastor and arranged for LaRose's wife and father to pick him up.
LaRose was "happily" reunited with wife, Eunice, and their two daughters, but his former church washed its hands of him. And that seemed to be that.
The LaRoses moved to Indiana in '77. Don became pastor of Hessville Baptist Church in Hammond, and continued to tell his story about Satanic abduction and brainwashing, claiming he had recovered the memories of the events only after a dose of sodium amytal administered by Dr. Marvin DeHaan.
Those pesky Satanists just wouldn't leave him alone, though. In June 1980 he claimed to have seen them sneaking around his church, peeping in windows. On June 10, he told Eunice he was going to the church to meet someone. He didn't return home; 7 years later he was declared dead, and Eunice remarried. Despite his presumed death, family members continued to search for Don LaRose and hoped to learn his fate.
On the website LaRose admitted his second vanishing was deliberate, but only because the unknown Satanists threatened to murder his family if he didn't disappear. He bicycled away from home, bought a bus ticket to Wyoming, and became "Ken Williams".
In the early '80s "Ken Williams" popped up in Centerton, became a radio personality on KURM, and remarried. He was elected mayor in 2001. But earlier this year he put up a website about Pastor LaRose's disappearance, written from the perspective of LaRose. It contained an autobio of LaRose, a recap of the initial "abduction" ("may have been SATANIC inspired"), and his "amazing story of survival" after being forced to leave his family. A member of LaRose's family discovered the site, and it was easily traced to Williams. On Monday, November 19, the Benton County Daily Record phoned Mayor Williams to confirm his true identity. For a day he denied being LaRose, then "came clean" about his past to the newspaper.
LaRose has resigned as mayor of Centerton. Though he expressed interest in seeing his daughters, his grandchildren, and his 96-year-old father, he plans to remain in town with his current wife, and will continue to use the name Ken Williams. He is reportedly not under investigation.
LaRose/Williams says the people who abducted and brainwashed him were probably not Satanists, just "Satanically inspired".
Sources:
- Florida wftv.com article (erroneously gives pastor's name as "LeRose")
- "Being Don LaRose" by Eleanor Evans and Tracy Neal, Benton County Daily Record online, Nov. 21/07
- "The Two Reappearances of Don LaRose", Benton County Daily Record online, Nov. 22/07- http://www.donlarose.com/ (Williams' website)
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
A Word from Alex Constantine, conspiracy researcher
August 27/07: "PS: "Satanic Panic" is one of your many undocumentable (when you get down to it) lies. Been there, done that. You and the False Memory Syndrome Foundation exist to discredit the victims of mind control activity. I exposed the FMSF long ago. You I'm exposing now. Same kettle of fish. Wallow in it. You are a collaborator in crimes aginst children, and don't want to come across as that. Too bad. I see you for what you are. That's what Constantines do. Poison yourself with asparatame, for all I care. It's the innocent that I'm trying to protect. The moles should follow their own advice on aspartame. Where's the libel suit? Haven't I defamed you by labelling you publicly as a mole? No. You deny it indirectly, by suggestion, above, but aren't you angry? I would be. I'd probably threaten to sue. But you take it in stride. Good little mole. I like you, too."
Not only was Mr. Constantine horribly mistaken about my gender (I'm a Canadian housewife, not an American man as he assumed), my source of income (I'm a housewife, not a CIA agent), but he's also dreadfully mistaken about my opinion of the False Memory Syndrom Foundation. I do not approve of this organization and I don't support it any way, nor do I reference the little valuable info that it provides from time to time. Why? The non-profit org was started by an accused child molestor, and his daughter's claims have never been disproven; there is no such thing as "FMS" - it was created by a member of the group, Ralph Underwager, who was later expelled from the group for expressing pro-pedophilia sentiments in a Dutch publication. I believe false memories can and do exist, but these aren't the people to be investigating it.
Not only was Mr. Constantine horribly mistaken about my gender (I'm a Canadian housewife, not an American man as he assumed), my source of income (I'm a housewife, not a CIA agent), but he's also dreadfully mistaken about my opinion of the False Memory Syndrom Foundation. I do not approve of this organization and I don't support it any way, nor do I reference the little valuable info that it provides from time to time. Why? The non-profit org was started by an accused child molestor, and his daughter's claims have never been disproven; there is no such thing as "FMS" - it was created by a member of the group, Ralph Underwager, who was later expelled from the group for expressing pro-pedophilia sentiments in a Dutch publication. I believe false memories can and do exist, but these aren't the people to be investigating it.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Another Recovered Memory Conviction
In my last post on recovered memory as trial evidence, I mentioned that the George Franklin conviction was the only one involving recovered memory of which I was aware. Reviewing some notes, I see this isn't so: In July 1992 Steven Slutzker of Pennsylvania was convicted of murdering his mistress's husband nearly 20 years earlier, largely because the woman's son had suddenly recalled seeing him at the scene of the crime.
Garfield, Pennsylvania, November 1990: John Mudd, Jr., 23, was playing Trivial Pursuit with friends when someone swore at his girlfriend. Infuriated, Mudd grabbed a chair and was about to hit his buddy with it when he suddenly experienced a strange flashback.
John envisioned his parents' home in Wilkinsburg, Pennslyvania, as it was when he was 5 years old. He and his parents were watching TV just as the power failed, so John Mudd Sr. went to the basement to check the circuit box. The Mudd family hear 7 gunshots. A moment later, John Jr. glimpsed his mom's friend - the man he had once seen trying to kiss him mom - emerge from the basement. The man was Steven Slutzker.
John Mudd hadn't remembered seeing Slutzker in his house that night until the surfaced 18 years later, but did know that Slutzer was arrested on suspicion of murdering his father shorlty after the fact. All charges against him had been dropped.
A new investigation into the Mudd murder was launched, based on John Mudd's recovered memories. In April 1991, Slutzker and Arlene Mudd were charged with murder and conspiracy; Mrs. Mudd's charges were eventually dismissed, but Slutzker was convicted and sentence to life in prison. Judge Jeffrey Manning agreed with the jury forewoman when he stated his opinion that Mudd' stestimony was consistence with the testimony of others, and with the physical evidence.
Garfield, Pennsylvania, November 1990: John Mudd, Jr., 23, was playing Trivial Pursuit with friends when someone swore at his girlfriend. Infuriated, Mudd grabbed a chair and was about to hit his buddy with it when he suddenly experienced a strange flashback.
John envisioned his parents' home in Wilkinsburg, Pennslyvania, as it was when he was 5 years old. He and his parents were watching TV just as the power failed, so John Mudd Sr. went to the basement to check the circuit box. The Mudd family hear 7 gunshots. A moment later, John Jr. glimpsed his mom's friend - the man he had once seen trying to kiss him mom - emerge from the basement. The man was Steven Slutzker.
John Mudd hadn't remembered seeing Slutzker in his house that night until the surfaced 18 years later, but did know that Slutzer was arrested on suspicion of murdering his father shorlty after the fact. All charges against him had been dropped.
A new investigation into the Mudd murder was launched, based on John Mudd's recovered memories. In April 1991, Slutzker and Arlene Mudd were charged with murder and conspiracy; Mrs. Mudd's charges were eventually dismissed, but Slutzker was convicted and sentence to life in prison. Judge Jeffrey Manning agreed with the jury forewoman when he stated his opinion that Mudd' stestimony was consistence with the testimony of others, and with the physical evidence.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Recovered Memory on Trial
On Saturday, Feb. 18, the CBS program 48 Hours Mystery aired a story on the 2001 murder of Ken Heitholt, a sports editor of the Columbia Daily Tribune in Columbia, Missouri.
Heitholt, 48, was beaten with a tire iron and strangled to death in the parking lot of the Tribune shortly after 2:00 AM on Halloween night, 2001, as he left his office. He had just finished celebrating his 5th anniversary with the newspaper. There were no suspects to the crime, which seemed to be a violent robbery.
More than 2 years after Heitholt's death, a 19-year-old Columbia resident named Charles Erickson confided to friends that he was having flashbacks and dreams related to the crime. He suspected he might have killed the sports editor, then blocked out all conscious memories of it.
One of Erickson's friends phoned in a tip to Crimestoppers, and Erickson was questioned by police. He told the investigators he had been having vivid dreams about committing the crime. In those dreams, he was aided by his friend Ryan Ferguson.
Over time, Erickson's vague memories solidified into a confession: On Halloween night, 2001, he and Ryan Ferguson had been drinking at a local bar with fake IDs. The boys were 17, students at the same Columbia high school. When they ran out of money, Ferguson suggested they rob a stranger. He even suggested they murder that stranger, since he "wanted to kill someone before he was 60." They selected Ken Heitholt at random, as he stood in the parking lot feeding a stray cat. Ferguson struck him with a tire iron from Ferguson's car while Erickson strangled the man with a belt.
Ryan Ferguson adamantly denied any involvement in the murder of Heitholt, and his family and friends rallied to his side. No physical evidence linked either of the teens to the crime. Yet an October 2004 trial resulted in the conviction of Ferguson for first-degree murder and second-degree robbery. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Erickson testified against his former friend as part of a plea bargain (25 years in prison for second-degree murder). (1)
The question is: Were Erickson's recovered memories accurate? Should recovered memories be allowed as testimony in court if there is no corroborating evidence?
The recovered memory controversy is a central issue in some accounts of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA) and murder. Prominent alleged victims of SRA like Michelle Pazder and Lauren Stratford recovered memories of abuse as adults, and their recollections were later shown to be fatally flawed. But those cases didn't result in successful prosecutions, nor even trials. The infamous Ramona case of Napa Valley ended in victory for the man accused of SRA by his adult daughter, who had retrieved unconscious memories of abuse in therapy. Mr. Ramona successfully sued the therapists for malpractice. (See Moira Johnston's excellent book on the Ramona case, Spectral Evidence). The only murder convictions resulting from recovered-memory testimony that comes to mind is the 1990 conviction of George Franklin for the murder of a young girl (overturned in 1996, when new evidence was discovered). Like the Heitholt case, this case had a startling lack of physical evidence. George Franklin's grown daughter, Eileen, had spontaneously recalled witnessing the crime 20 years after the fact, and many of the details she provided about the crime scene and the time of the murder were glaringly incorrect. (2)Franklin's conviction has been widely criticized by memory experts and legal commentators, including Elizabeth Loftus (read an excerpt from Loftus's and Katherine Ketcham's The Myth of Repressed Memory detailing Eileen Franklin's recovered memories).
So far, the outcome of the Columbia case hasn't drawn much criticism from the legal or psychological professions. If the use of recovered-memory testimony isn't examined carefully, the case of Ferguson and Erickson could set a hazardous precedent.
Sources:
1. Columbia Daily Tribune articles on the Heitholt case (available online here) and Feb. 18/06 48 Hours Mystery (CBS Television)
2. Once Upon a Time by Harry N. MacLean (Dell paperback, 1993) and Sins of the Father by Eileen Franklin and Wiliam Wright (Fawcett Crest paperback, 1991)
Heitholt, 48, was beaten with a tire iron and strangled to death in the parking lot of the Tribune shortly after 2:00 AM on Halloween night, 2001, as he left his office. He had just finished celebrating his 5th anniversary with the newspaper. There were no suspects to the crime, which seemed to be a violent robbery.
More than 2 years after Heitholt's death, a 19-year-old Columbia resident named Charles Erickson confided to friends that he was having flashbacks and dreams related to the crime. He suspected he might have killed the sports editor, then blocked out all conscious memories of it.
One of Erickson's friends phoned in a tip to Crimestoppers, and Erickson was questioned by police. He told the investigators he had been having vivid dreams about committing the crime. In those dreams, he was aided by his friend Ryan Ferguson.
Over time, Erickson's vague memories solidified into a confession: On Halloween night, 2001, he and Ryan Ferguson had been drinking at a local bar with fake IDs. The boys were 17, students at the same Columbia high school. When they ran out of money, Ferguson suggested they rob a stranger. He even suggested they murder that stranger, since he "wanted to kill someone before he was 60." They selected Ken Heitholt at random, as he stood in the parking lot feeding a stray cat. Ferguson struck him with a tire iron from Ferguson's car while Erickson strangled the man with a belt.
Ryan Ferguson adamantly denied any involvement in the murder of Heitholt, and his family and friends rallied to his side. No physical evidence linked either of the teens to the crime. Yet an October 2004 trial resulted in the conviction of Ferguson for first-degree murder and second-degree robbery. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Erickson testified against his former friend as part of a plea bargain (25 years in prison for second-degree murder). (1)
The question is: Were Erickson's recovered memories accurate? Should recovered memories be allowed as testimony in court if there is no corroborating evidence?
The recovered memory controversy is a central issue in some accounts of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA) and murder. Prominent alleged victims of SRA like Michelle Pazder and Lauren Stratford recovered memories of abuse as adults, and their recollections were later shown to be fatally flawed. But those cases didn't result in successful prosecutions, nor even trials. The infamous Ramona case of Napa Valley ended in victory for the man accused of SRA by his adult daughter, who had retrieved unconscious memories of abuse in therapy. Mr. Ramona successfully sued the therapists for malpractice. (See Moira Johnston's excellent book on the Ramona case, Spectral Evidence). The only murder convictions resulting from recovered-memory testimony that comes to mind is the 1990 conviction of George Franklin for the murder of a young girl (overturned in 1996, when new evidence was discovered). Like the Heitholt case, this case had a startling lack of physical evidence. George Franklin's grown daughter, Eileen, had spontaneously recalled witnessing the crime 20 years after the fact, and many of the details she provided about the crime scene and the time of the murder were glaringly incorrect. (2)Franklin's conviction has been widely criticized by memory experts and legal commentators, including Elizabeth Loftus (read an excerpt from Loftus's and Katherine Ketcham's The Myth of Repressed Memory detailing Eileen Franklin's recovered memories).
So far, the outcome of the Columbia case hasn't drawn much criticism from the legal or psychological professions. If the use of recovered-memory testimony isn't examined carefully, the case of Ferguson and Erickson could set a hazardous precedent.
Sources:
1. Columbia Daily Tribune articles on the Heitholt case (available online here) and Feb. 18/06 48 Hours Mystery (CBS Television)
2. Once Upon a Time by Harry N. MacLean (Dell paperback, 1993) and Sins of the Father by Eileen Franklin and Wiliam Wright (Fawcett Crest paperback, 1991)
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Update on Richard Hamlin
Richard Hamlin, the Sacramento man who claims he was nearly the victim of Satanic ritual sacrifice at the hands of his incestuous father-in-law (see "The Hamlin Case" below), has been convicted of spousal abuse and the other charges against him. Apparently the jury didn't buy the Satanic cult stories.
Hamlin could be given a life sentence.
Hamlin could be given a life sentence.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
The Hamlin Case: Satanic Ritual Abuse in Sacramento
California attorney Richard Hamlin believes his wife is under the control of her father's Satanic cult; conspirologists support him.
Until February 2004, California attorney Richard Hamilton led an outwardly idyllic existence. He was a former Sacramento County deputy prosecutor with a successful Sacramento practice, a $1 million mansion in posh El Dorado Hills, and four children by his wife of 20 years. Susan Hamlin, 46, was also an attorney. The only obvious wrench in the works was Hamilton's elderly father-in-law, a respected Fresno biochemist named Sydney Siemer.
In 1999, following a period of hospitalization for depression, Susan Hamlin had begun to recover repressed memories of childhood rape and torture at the hands of her father. She shared these horrific memories with her husband in 2002, and he responded by traveling to Fresno and publicly distributing fliers with damning information about Dr. Siemer.
Dr. Siemer hired a lawyer and denied that he had ever abused Susan or her three siblings, filing a restraining order against the Hamlins. He offered to attend therapy with his daughter to help her realize that her memories of incest and violence were false, but Mrs. Hamlin declined. Mrs. Hamlin's sister couldn't recall any abuse in the Siemer home, so she entered therapy to try to recover memories of her own. To date, she has not come forward with any allegations.
February 22, 2004: Susan Hamlin returned home from a Starbuck's in Granite Bay covered in bruises, her nose broken and some ribs fractured. Her husband demanded to know what happened. Mrs. Hamlin confessed that for the past two years, members of a Satanic cult to which she and her father belonged had been plotting to ritually murder Richard Hamlin as a "trophy Christian", a fitting sacrifice to Satan. Susan was promised she would be made high priestess of the cult if she went along with the plan. The murder was scheduled for March 1, at midnight. When she tried to extricate herself from the plot, she explained, she was summoned to meet with a fellow Satanist named Lisa Clum at the Granite Bay Starbuck's. (Apparently, the women were going to chat about Satanic ritual sacrifice over venti lattes and blueberry scones.) As soon as she stepped out of her car, Lisa's 47-year-old husband, Rock Clum, allegedly beat Mrs. Hamilton to a bloody pulp right in the parking lot and warned her to "stick with the plan".
Susan Hamlin had even more chilling revelations. Her father continued to exert sexual and emotional control over her to such an extent that she was still having incestuous sexual relations with him. He and his friend Howard Mily, the high priest of the cult, had been sexually exploiting her since she was a young teenager. They had prostituted her, used her to procure other young victims, and ritually tortured her in the most sadistic ways imaginable. She admitted that she had molested 3 of the couple's 4 children from 1996 to 2002, under her father's instruction. He taught her how to hypnotize her kids and sexually abuse them as any "good Satanist mom" should, she said. At the time the abuse began, the kids were ages 6, 8, and 12. Dr. Siemer, his wife (Susan's stepmom), and Susan's sister all molested the Hamlin children as well.
There was more. In 1982, Howard Mily and others in the cult tortured Susan for a 3-week period by stringing her up on a pegboard and confining her in cold storage. Twice she was forced to witness the torture of a dark-haired 9- or 10-year-old girl they had abducted; they broke the girl's bones and tied her body into strange positions, then murdered her. This was filmed.
Dr. Siemer had a stash of child pornography and snuff films in his Fresno home, according to Mrs. Hamlin. Aghast, Richard Hamlin urged his wife to report everything to the police. On February 26, four days after the Starbuck's beating, he accompanied her to the El Dorado Sheriff's office, where she confessed to molesting her kids and plotting to kill her husband. She explained that the sexual abuse was not for her own sexual gratification, but an effort to accustom the children to touching and to "keep [them] from thinking their sexuality was their own." She also described the murder she witnessed in 1982, not specifying if this was a recovered memory or not.
Several detectives interviewed Mrs. Hamlin on tape and had her sign a statement. The Hamlin children were immediately removed from the home by Child Protective Services for their own safety, but the detectives decided not to arrest Mrs. Hamilton until an investigation into her claims had been conducted.
Two days later, Susan Hamlin returned to the Sheriff's office and recanted every word of her elaborate signed confession. It was a lie, she said; neither she nor anyone in her family ever molested the kids. Her father had never sexually abused her. It was Richard Hamlin, not Rock Clum, who beat her up the previous week and forced her to implicate her father in a murder plot that was all in his head. After the beating, he had threatened her at gunpoint and swordpoint.
The detectives had been reluctant to accept Mrs. Hamlin's original claims, but they pounced on her retraction. Richard Hamlin was immediately arrested and eventually charged with 18 felony counts of spousal abuse, torture, death threats, negligent discharge of a handgun, and child endangerment. His trial began on October 11, '05. His 18-year-old son Ryan took the stand and testified that Mr. Hamlin had been beating his wife up to 5 times per week since 2002. The day of the Starbuck's beating, believing there really was a Satanic plot against his life, he had forced the whole family into the van and driven to Granite Bay with a sword, a Derringer, and a paintball gun full of frozen paintballs. The two Hamlin girls were dropped off somewhere, but Ryan and his younger brother were forced to stay in the vehicle and train the paintball gun on their mother while she gave directions to the Clum house. Richard Hamlin intended to murder Lisa Clum and Dr. Siemer, Ryan told the court. (1)
Mr. Hamlin is defending himself in the trial. You might wonder how he could possibly stand a chance against the incredibly damaging testimony of his own son and ex-wife. It's easier than it looks. First of all, Hamlin was able to acquire Susan's journals from 1999-2002. They are chock-full of recovered memories of incest, Satanic ceremonies, and torture, undermining her claim that Dr. Siemer and his alleged accomplices never laid a hand on anyone. To complicate matters, Susan's court testimony at times directly contradicts her father's. She insists he never worked in Indio, California (home of the notorious Cabazon Indian Reservation, supposed site of illegal weapons experiments and gun-dealing throughout the 1980s) - but Dr. Siemer admits he did. (3)
Naturally, conspirologists have pounced on the Hamlin case. The Indio link "confirms" the findings of investigative journalist Danny Casolaro of Virginia, who in the late '80s uncovered connections among pirated PROMIS software, the October Surprise that allegedly cost Jimmy Carter the 1980 election, the Beirut bombing, fuel-air explosives developed on the Cabazon Reservation by Wackenhut and other CIA fronts, and dozens of other shady doings that he attributed to a power cabal called "The Octopus". Casalaro's Octopus theories are too complex to examine here, but I will note that Casalaro was found dead in a West Virginia hotel room in 1991, an apparent suicide. Supporters declare he was murdered for being a Man Who Knew Too Much. (see Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith's book The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro for a detailed study of this, or save yourself some trouble and check out Kenn Thomas's chapter "Behold a Pale Horse" in Jim Keith's Secret and Suppressed, Feral House, 1993)
One of Casalaro's primary sources was a man named Michael Riconosciuto, who claimed he personally modified stolen PROMIS software for the U.S. government (so it could be used to "spy" on foreign computers). He also made a lot of other claims regarding the CIA, NSA, the October Surprise, etc. Hereafter I'll refer to Riconosciuto as "Tater", since he looks like Mr. Potatohead with a Mo haircut.
After Richard Hamlin's arrest, Tater informed him that he had important information about his father-in-law's activites. On March 30 of this year, Tater penned a letter of Judicial Notification to the Chief Judge of the Superior Court in El Dorado, claiming he has proof that Dr. Sydney Siemer worked on illegal biowarfare research for the CIA in Indio in 1982. I don't believe this information is even remotely relevant to the Hamlin case, which is a domestic violence case. What does biowarfare research have to do with incest, death threats, and spousal abuse? This is how the judge, Edward Keller, responded as well.
Tater is currently incarcerated on unrelated charges and will not be allowed to testify in the Hamlin trial. Unfortunately, Richard Hamlin firmly believes that Tater is a credible witness who could aid his defense. From Hamlin's open letter, posted on his website: "Michael Riconosciuto is in jail. He has fought the government over and over again. He could have seen my plight and said, 'It’s not my fight,' yet he won’t. With nothing to gain—except a sense of justice and truth—he volunteered his information about Dr. Sidney Siemer."Why is Tater even involved? Well, his letter of Judicial Notification speaks for itself..."My legal defense team has in their possession documents obtained after my trial that clearly can be used to support the defense of Richard Hamlin, and prove the direct knowledge I possess...is true and correct...There is the additional matter of the prosecution of Philip Arthur Thompson who is presently charged with murder and rape in the same jurisdiction as the Richard Hamlin case. The above mentioned government documents will show Thompson was actively working as an FBI informant against me at the time he committed numerous rapes and murders. Many...orchestrated by the real perpetrator in the Hamlin case." Tater continues, "Eldorado County [sic] has demonstrated a conflict of interest between the Thompson case and the Hamlin case...impeach[ing] my credibility in the Hamlin case serves to obstruct my being an effective witness in the Thompson case.." Furthermore, Tater states he's been threatened by the "real perpetrator" in the Hamlin case, causing him to be transferred to a medical facility where his prostate canser isn't being treated properly. You decide: Does this sound like a man with "nothing to gain"?
Richard Hamlin's open letter makes clear his position on his ex-wife's original claims of being a Satanic pawn. He believes them. Yet he is quick to point out that the case is about incest and psychological abuse, not occult beliefs and practices. He writes, "The traditional media has focused almost exclusively on the 'Satanic' angle of this case. Such reporting is a miscarriage of justice to the real overriding issue of incest and molest and the methods child molesters use to enforce and perpetrate their ongoing abuse.This case is about incest." Hamlin believes that Dr. Siemer raped and terrorized his 4 children, continuing to have relations with Suan even after she married. He had sex with her the night before her wedding. The kids were "swapped" with other incestuous families and prostituted. Susan helped her dad gain access to other victims, including her own kids. Dr. Siemer wanted Richard Hamlin dead to shut him up and get him out of the way, so he could continue to exert sexual and emotional control over his family.
Based on the findings of Virginia McCullough of the conspiracy-oriented website http://www.newsmakingnews.com/ and the private investigation of the rather sinister Ted Gunderson (who insinuated himself into the case alongside Tater), Richard Hamlin also believes his father-in-law was a part of MKULTRA, the government's secret mind-control program. "So, we have a man that usd mind control, learned from our own government, to create the perfect incestuous family". McCullough has written a series of articles in defense of Richard Hamlin and buys the Satanic ritual abuse stories hook-line-and-sinker. She clearly relishes the case, calling it "the best conspiracy case in recent California history". She claims two anonymous sources have linked Dr. Siemer to a CIA child kidnapping/prostitution ring called The Finders, and revealed that he's a "senior member" of the Temple of Set's Order of the Trapezoid. There is no evidence to support either claim.
Richard Hamlin and his conspiracy-minded supporters aren't acknowledging the possibilities that Susan Hamlin could be a compulsive liar, an hysteric, and/or mentally ill. They uncritically accept the basic truth of her original claims and have fit them into a standard conspiracy framework. According to Mr. Hamlin, Dr. Siemer escaped detection for so many years by using trauma-based mind control and the resultant Multiple Personality Disorder to create amnesia in Susan and her siblings, then adding intimidation of an occult nature. He also has friends in high places. All of these conclusions are derived from Susan Hamlin's descriptions of conditioning, hypnosis, electroshock, and sensory deprivation used by her dad to control her. Hamlin makes much of the fact that Dr. Siemer reportedly worked with Army Intelligence and had a high security clearance. He and McCullough believe he was engaged in covert operations, radiation experiments, and illegal biowarfare research. Again, I don't know what any of this has to do with domestic abuse and death threats.
Worst of all, Hamlin blames himself for much of what has occurred. He expresses deep guilt for not having realized that his "babies were being hurt...I cared about me, material things, and my career." (2)
The bottom line: The Hamlin case is the result of incredibly complex intrafamily issues that could never be fully resolved in a courtroom. The principal players themselves don't appear to know what is true, what is imagined, and what is an inextricable combination of truth and imagination.
Sources:
1. Sacramento Bee, Oct. 26/05, "Teen: Father feared a plot" by Ramon Coronado
2. Official site for the Richard Hamlin defense (www.geocities.com/richardwhamlin/)
3. Virginia McCullough articles at www.newsmakingnews.com
Until February 2004, California attorney Richard Hamilton led an outwardly idyllic existence. He was a former Sacramento County deputy prosecutor with a successful Sacramento practice, a $1 million mansion in posh El Dorado Hills, and four children by his wife of 20 years. Susan Hamlin, 46, was also an attorney. The only obvious wrench in the works was Hamilton's elderly father-in-law, a respected Fresno biochemist named Sydney Siemer.
In 1999, following a period of hospitalization for depression, Susan Hamlin had begun to recover repressed memories of childhood rape and torture at the hands of her father. She shared these horrific memories with her husband in 2002, and he responded by traveling to Fresno and publicly distributing fliers with damning information about Dr. Siemer.
Dr. Siemer hired a lawyer and denied that he had ever abused Susan or her three siblings, filing a restraining order against the Hamlins. He offered to attend therapy with his daughter to help her realize that her memories of incest and violence were false, but Mrs. Hamlin declined. Mrs. Hamlin's sister couldn't recall any abuse in the Siemer home, so she entered therapy to try to recover memories of her own. To date, she has not come forward with any allegations.
February 22, 2004: Susan Hamlin returned home from a Starbuck's in Granite Bay covered in bruises, her nose broken and some ribs fractured. Her husband demanded to know what happened. Mrs. Hamlin confessed that for the past two years, members of a Satanic cult to which she and her father belonged had been plotting to ritually murder Richard Hamlin as a "trophy Christian", a fitting sacrifice to Satan. Susan was promised she would be made high priestess of the cult if she went along with the plan. The murder was scheduled for March 1, at midnight. When she tried to extricate herself from the plot, she explained, she was summoned to meet with a fellow Satanist named Lisa Clum at the Granite Bay Starbuck's. (Apparently, the women were going to chat about Satanic ritual sacrifice over venti lattes and blueberry scones.) As soon as she stepped out of her car, Lisa's 47-year-old husband, Rock Clum, allegedly beat Mrs. Hamilton to a bloody pulp right in the parking lot and warned her to "stick with the plan".
Susan Hamlin had even more chilling revelations. Her father continued to exert sexual and emotional control over her to such an extent that she was still having incestuous sexual relations with him. He and his friend Howard Mily, the high priest of the cult, had been sexually exploiting her since she was a young teenager. They had prostituted her, used her to procure other young victims, and ritually tortured her in the most sadistic ways imaginable. She admitted that she had molested 3 of the couple's 4 children from 1996 to 2002, under her father's instruction. He taught her how to hypnotize her kids and sexually abuse them as any "good Satanist mom" should, she said. At the time the abuse began, the kids were ages 6, 8, and 12. Dr. Siemer, his wife (Susan's stepmom), and Susan's sister all molested the Hamlin children as well.
There was more. In 1982, Howard Mily and others in the cult tortured Susan for a 3-week period by stringing her up on a pegboard and confining her in cold storage. Twice she was forced to witness the torture of a dark-haired 9- or 10-year-old girl they had abducted; they broke the girl's bones and tied her body into strange positions, then murdered her. This was filmed.
Dr. Siemer had a stash of child pornography and snuff films in his Fresno home, according to Mrs. Hamlin. Aghast, Richard Hamlin urged his wife to report everything to the police. On February 26, four days after the Starbuck's beating, he accompanied her to the El Dorado Sheriff's office, where she confessed to molesting her kids and plotting to kill her husband. She explained that the sexual abuse was not for her own sexual gratification, but an effort to accustom the children to touching and to "keep [them] from thinking their sexuality was their own." She also described the murder she witnessed in 1982, not specifying if this was a recovered memory or not.
Several detectives interviewed Mrs. Hamlin on tape and had her sign a statement. The Hamlin children were immediately removed from the home by Child Protective Services for their own safety, but the detectives decided not to arrest Mrs. Hamilton until an investigation into her claims had been conducted.
Two days later, Susan Hamlin returned to the Sheriff's office and recanted every word of her elaborate signed confession. It was a lie, she said; neither she nor anyone in her family ever molested the kids. Her father had never sexually abused her. It was Richard Hamlin, not Rock Clum, who beat her up the previous week and forced her to implicate her father in a murder plot that was all in his head. After the beating, he had threatened her at gunpoint and swordpoint.
The detectives had been reluctant to accept Mrs. Hamlin's original claims, but they pounced on her retraction. Richard Hamlin was immediately arrested and eventually charged with 18 felony counts of spousal abuse, torture, death threats, negligent discharge of a handgun, and child endangerment. His trial began on October 11, '05. His 18-year-old son Ryan took the stand and testified that Mr. Hamlin had been beating his wife up to 5 times per week since 2002. The day of the Starbuck's beating, believing there really was a Satanic plot against his life, he had forced the whole family into the van and driven to Granite Bay with a sword, a Derringer, and a paintball gun full of frozen paintballs. The two Hamlin girls were dropped off somewhere, but Ryan and his younger brother were forced to stay in the vehicle and train the paintball gun on their mother while she gave directions to the Clum house. Richard Hamlin intended to murder Lisa Clum and Dr. Siemer, Ryan told the court. (1)
Mr. Hamlin is defending himself in the trial. You might wonder how he could possibly stand a chance against the incredibly damaging testimony of his own son and ex-wife. It's easier than it looks. First of all, Hamlin was able to acquire Susan's journals from 1999-2002. They are chock-full of recovered memories of incest, Satanic ceremonies, and torture, undermining her claim that Dr. Siemer and his alleged accomplices never laid a hand on anyone. To complicate matters, Susan's court testimony at times directly contradicts her father's. She insists he never worked in Indio, California (home of the notorious Cabazon Indian Reservation, supposed site of illegal weapons experiments and gun-dealing throughout the 1980s) - but Dr. Siemer admits he did. (3)
Naturally, conspirologists have pounced on the Hamlin case. The Indio link "confirms" the findings of investigative journalist Danny Casolaro of Virginia, who in the late '80s uncovered connections among pirated PROMIS software, the October Surprise that allegedly cost Jimmy Carter the 1980 election, the Beirut bombing, fuel-air explosives developed on the Cabazon Reservation by Wackenhut and other CIA fronts, and dozens of other shady doings that he attributed to a power cabal called "The Octopus". Casalaro's Octopus theories are too complex to examine here, but I will note that Casalaro was found dead in a West Virginia hotel room in 1991, an apparent suicide. Supporters declare he was murdered for being a Man Who Knew Too Much. (see Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith's book The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro for a detailed study of this, or save yourself some trouble and check out Kenn Thomas's chapter "Behold a Pale Horse" in Jim Keith's Secret and Suppressed, Feral House, 1993)
One of Casalaro's primary sources was a man named Michael Riconosciuto, who claimed he personally modified stolen PROMIS software for the U.S. government (so it could be used to "spy" on foreign computers). He also made a lot of other claims regarding the CIA, NSA, the October Surprise, etc. Hereafter I'll refer to Riconosciuto as "Tater", since he looks like Mr. Potatohead with a Mo haircut.
After Richard Hamlin's arrest, Tater informed him that he had important information about his father-in-law's activites. On March 30 of this year, Tater penned a letter of Judicial Notification to the Chief Judge of the Superior Court in El Dorado, claiming he has proof that Dr. Sydney Siemer worked on illegal biowarfare research for the CIA in Indio in 1982. I don't believe this information is even remotely relevant to the Hamlin case, which is a domestic violence case. What does biowarfare research have to do with incest, death threats, and spousal abuse? This is how the judge, Edward Keller, responded as well.
Tater is currently incarcerated on unrelated charges and will not be allowed to testify in the Hamlin trial. Unfortunately, Richard Hamlin firmly believes that Tater is a credible witness who could aid his defense. From Hamlin's open letter, posted on his website: "Michael Riconosciuto is in jail. He has fought the government over and over again. He could have seen my plight and said, 'It’s not my fight,' yet he won’t. With nothing to gain—except a sense of justice and truth—he volunteered his information about Dr. Sidney Siemer."Why is Tater even involved? Well, his letter of Judicial Notification speaks for itself..."My legal defense team has in their possession documents obtained after my trial that clearly can be used to support the defense of Richard Hamlin, and prove the direct knowledge I possess...is true and correct...There is the additional matter of the prosecution of Philip Arthur Thompson who is presently charged with murder and rape in the same jurisdiction as the Richard Hamlin case. The above mentioned government documents will show Thompson was actively working as an FBI informant against me at the time he committed numerous rapes and murders. Many...orchestrated by the real perpetrator in the Hamlin case." Tater continues, "Eldorado County [sic] has demonstrated a conflict of interest between the Thompson case and the Hamlin case...impeach[ing] my credibility in the Hamlin case serves to obstruct my being an effective witness in the Thompson case.." Furthermore, Tater states he's been threatened by the "real perpetrator" in the Hamlin case, causing him to be transferred to a medical facility where his prostate canser isn't being treated properly. You decide: Does this sound like a man with "nothing to gain"?
Richard Hamlin's open letter makes clear his position on his ex-wife's original claims of being a Satanic pawn. He believes them. Yet he is quick to point out that the case is about incest and psychological abuse, not occult beliefs and practices. He writes, "The traditional media has focused almost exclusively on the 'Satanic' angle of this case. Such reporting is a miscarriage of justice to the real overriding issue of incest and molest and the methods child molesters use to enforce and perpetrate their ongoing abuse.This case is about incest." Hamlin believes that Dr. Siemer raped and terrorized his 4 children, continuing to have relations with Suan even after she married. He had sex with her the night before her wedding. The kids were "swapped" with other incestuous families and prostituted. Susan helped her dad gain access to other victims, including her own kids. Dr. Siemer wanted Richard Hamlin dead to shut him up and get him out of the way, so he could continue to exert sexual and emotional control over his family.
Based on the findings of Virginia McCullough of the conspiracy-oriented website http://www.newsmakingnews.com/ and the private investigation of the rather sinister Ted Gunderson (who insinuated himself into the case alongside Tater), Richard Hamlin also believes his father-in-law was a part of MKULTRA, the government's secret mind-control program. "So, we have a man that usd mind control, learned from our own government, to create the perfect incestuous family". McCullough has written a series of articles in defense of Richard Hamlin and buys the Satanic ritual abuse stories hook-line-and-sinker. She clearly relishes the case, calling it "the best conspiracy case in recent California history". She claims two anonymous sources have linked Dr. Siemer to a CIA child kidnapping/prostitution ring called The Finders, and revealed that he's a "senior member" of the Temple of Set's Order of the Trapezoid. There is no evidence to support either claim.
Richard Hamlin and his conspiracy-minded supporters aren't acknowledging the possibilities that Susan Hamlin could be a compulsive liar, an hysteric, and/or mentally ill. They uncritically accept the basic truth of her original claims and have fit them into a standard conspiracy framework. According to Mr. Hamlin, Dr. Siemer escaped detection for so many years by using trauma-based mind control and the resultant Multiple Personality Disorder to create amnesia in Susan and her siblings, then adding intimidation of an occult nature. He also has friends in high places. All of these conclusions are derived from Susan Hamlin's descriptions of conditioning, hypnosis, electroshock, and sensory deprivation used by her dad to control her. Hamlin makes much of the fact that Dr. Siemer reportedly worked with Army Intelligence and had a high security clearance. He and McCullough believe he was engaged in covert operations, radiation experiments, and illegal biowarfare research. Again, I don't know what any of this has to do with domestic abuse and death threats.
Worst of all, Hamlin blames himself for much of what has occurred. He expresses deep guilt for not having realized that his "babies were being hurt...I cared about me, material things, and my career." (2)
The bottom line: The Hamlin case is the result of incredibly complex intrafamily issues that could never be fully resolved in a courtroom. The principal players themselves don't appear to know what is true, what is imagined, and what is an inextricable combination of truth and imagination.
Sources:
1. Sacramento Bee, Oct. 26/05, "Teen: Father feared a plot" by Ramon Coronado
2. Official site for the Richard Hamlin defense (www.geocities.com/richardwhamlin/)
3. Virginia McCullough articles at www.newsmakingnews.com
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