Charles Manson, Son of Sam and the Process Church of the Final Judgment: Exploring the Alleged Connections By Curt Rowlett

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First publishing, December 1999.  Revised: January 2005. All Rights Reserved; this article may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express, written permission of the author. (Permission to link to this article from the World Wide Web is hereby granted).

Fear is at the root of man’s destruction of himself.  Without fear there is no blame. Without blame there is no conflict.  Without conflict there is no destruction.  But there is fear: deep within the core of every human being it lurks like a monster, dark and intangible.  Its outward effects are unmistakable.  Its source is hidden.

 Quote from the Process Church article On Fear

 Have you ever seen the coyote in the desert?  Watching, tuned in, completely aware. Christ on the cross, the coyote in the desert -- it’s the same thing, man.  The coyote is beautiful.  He moves through the desert delicately, aware of everything, looking around. He hears every sound, smells every smell, sees everything that moves.  He’s in a state of total paranoia, and total paranoia is total awareness.

Quote from Charles Manson about “getting the fear,” as published in the June 1970 issue of Rolling Stone magazine

Beginning in the 1980’s, Americans -- and later, many European countries -- found themselves in the grip of a contemporary urban legend that was later dubbed the “Satanic Panic.”  This modern day witch hunt included tales of so-called “satanic ritual abuse,” stories of children being preyed upon by “occultists” and alleged plots by organized groups of satanists who were allegedly bent on world domination through murder and every kind of crime and horror imaginable.  Central to many of these theories were the purported ties between the infamous Charles Manson family, New York serial killer David Berkowitz (the so-called “Son of Sam”) and the Process Church of the Final Judgment.  Included in this chapter is a brief history of the Process Church (a group whose name has long been bandied about as a shadowy, sinister, satanist group) and a close examination of the alleged “connections” between the Process and both the Manson and Son of Sam murders.  But first, a little history . . .

Preface: A Pandora’s Box

If you listened to some people, you would have to believe that America and the rest of the world was in the grip of a satanic plague of Biblical proportions.  Some see satanists lurking behind every tree and behind this alleged menace, a nefarious cabal of devil-worshiping murder junkies, bent on world destruction and either led or inspired by the shadowy, sinister, “satanist” Process Church.  (The Process Church of the Final Judgment, a strange and highly controversial religious group that “worshipped” both Christ and Satan, will be discussed at length further in this story). 

 And incredibly, this idea had been given credence by the very people whom many of us had been taught to trust all of our lives, including law enforcement officials, politicians and religious leaders, some who had become self-styled “experts” on satanism and alleged “occult” crimes.

 So just where did it all begin?

 Flashback to 1980 when psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder published a book entitled Michelle Remembers.  This book, advertised as non-fiction, created the first tale of a “repressed memory” of “satanic ritual abuse,” centering on Pazder’s “client” Michelle Smith (whom later evidence would show was actually his wife).  In this book, Pazder claimed that when Michelle was a child, she had been sexually abused by satanists and that her memory of the abuse had been repressed in her mind until she had undergone specialized therapy provided by Pazder.  (Pazder is credited for being the person who originally coined the phrase “ritual abuse”).

 According to this story, Michelle had been abused by members of a “satanic coven” headquartered in Victoria, British Columbia during the 1950’s.  Among the many ghoulish and extraordinary claims made in the narrative are tales of Michelle being placed in a car with a corpse which was then purposely crashed; being locked in a cage full of snakes while naked; and being taken to a cemetery where she was lowered into an open grave and then covered with dead cats.  (Michelle also claimed to have a scar on her body that was caused by Satan wrapping his barbed tail around her neck!). 

 Not surprisingly, the book became a best seller.  However, a 1990 London newspaper that conducted an investigation into Smith’s background revealed that the entire tale was a fraud.  But the fact that the story had been exposed as fabrication did not stop Michelle Remembers from becoming the catalyst for a flurry of similar accusations aimed not only at “satanists” and “witches,” but at virtually all other occultists whose religious beliefs were viewed as being beyond the norm.

 Following closely on the heels of Michelle Remembers, other sensational reports of so-called “repressed memories” soon began to surface, this time centered on women who allegedly had been forced to act as baby-breeders for organized satanic groups, ostensibly so that their children could be murdered in ritualistic sacrifices to Satan.  One of the most fantastic examples of this claim surfaced in the book Satan’s Underground by Lauren Stratford and Johanna Michaelson, a conservative Christian author. (3)

 Stratford’s book was subsequently exposed as an almost total sham by the non-fundamentalist Christian magazine Cornerstone.  In an excellent commentary written by Cornerstone in order to debunk Stratford’s claims, the authors note:

 A synopsis of the story told in Satan’s Underground is very difficult to produce. The book is missing dates, places, outside events, and even the true names of the principal characters necessary for placing the story in an historical and geographical context.  Stratford says, “In part this is for my own protection, but it also serves to remind you that what I’ve endured is not limited to one city or region.  I have also changed names and descriptions of many key figures in order to protect the victims.”

The Cornerstone article goes on to comment that “Satan’s Underground is one of the most sexually and violently graphic contemporary Christian books we know” and that as far as such sensational claims were concerned “one may believe them because ‘they’re too bizarre not to be true,’ but they should never be substituted for careful, accurate, and truthful reporting.”

But the damage had already been done.  Soon the daytime television talk shows and other forms of the tabloid press were awash with stories from other self-proclaimed “breeders,” and the Cornerstone expose was practically ignored.

 Another accusation to come along was one that was guaranteed to strike fear in the heart of any healthy human being: that groups of satanists were preying upon children in the nation’s day-care centers.  This tale was first concocted by a woman named Judy Johnson (who would later be diagnosed as an acute paranoid schizophrenic).  Johnson alleged that her child had been subjected to sexual abuse during satanic rituals while at the McMartin Preschool in Los Angeles, California.  A modern-day witch-hunt soon got underway, led by sincere, but misguided prosecutors, imposters calling themselves “ritual abuse therapists,” and frightened parents.  The case generated much sordid and sensationalized press coverage and soon a flood of similar accusations began to spread across the United States and abroad.

 Ignored in the ensuing frenzy was the person who had made the original accusations: Judy Johnson was later found dead in her own home by police four months before the McMartin trial started in 1987, having succumbed to liver disease resulting from her chronic alcoholism.  The subsequent trial would last for six years without a single conviction ever being obtained.  The cost to taxpayers for the trial ran into the millions of dollars, ruined the reputations and lives of innocent people and needlessly traumatized children at the hands of quack therapists, all due to the accusations of a drunken, delusional person.

 And the Charles Manson murder case has always been fertile ground for theories of a satanic nature to grow in.  Manson and his followers were convicted for nine murders, including the gory 1969 Tate-LaBianca slayings and were suspected by prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi (and others) of possibly having committed as many as thirty-five murders. 

 There have been a number of books and articles written since the 1969 Manson murders occurred that have attempted to create overly sinister, satanic connections between Charles Manson and the Process Church of the Final Judgment and more recently, to the “Son of Sam” murders committed by serial killer David Berkowitz.  But what I have discovered is that, with very few exceptions, the majority of these accusations are based primarily on either biased information sources or are the result of highly questionable speculation and theorizing on the part of some writers.  When held up to close scrutiny, most of these alleged “connections” fall apart completely or evaporate into the same thin air from which they were pulled.  I have found that this is often due to the fact that the sources for some of the more outlandish information were either non-existent to begin with or come from less-than credible individuals whom some researchers are all too willing to consider, especially if what the source has to say strengthens their case for a satanic conspiracy. 

 Additionally, it has also been my experience that when it comes to trying to pin down some of these incredible assertions, those making them will sometimes seek refuge in the claim (as noted previously in the case of Lauren Stratford, and further in this narrative) that their source’s names cannot be revealed because doing so would “place their lives in danger,” the most convenient of all cop-outs, to be sure.

 As you will see, there are some individuals for whom the Process Church/Manson/Son of Sam “connection” is the smoking gun that serves as the foundation for their evidence of a “global satanic cult conspiracy,” and for a few of these people, the old adage, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” serves them well enough to include the most tenuous links in order to add punch to a favored conspiracy theory.  But it is my opinion that perhaps these individuals would be better advised to remember the wise words of author/researcher John Keel, who once wrote: “Where there’s smoke, there may be a smudge pot.”  (Later on in the narrative, I refer to those types of individuals as “Smoke Pumpers” because they have pumped so much smoke into the case through wild and unsubstantiated allegations that it has now become nearly impossible to be able to see clearly where the truth begins and ends at this point).

 This story will try to set some of the record straight.  It will also show that the Process Church was not truly a satanic religion, but rather a group of well-meaning, but perhaps misguided, “new age” Christians who made use of satanic trappings and imagery that were sprinkled liberally into their philosophy.  Ditto for Charles Manson and David Berkowitz.

 I come qualified to make that statement and to write an article that discusses satanism and other alleged occult connections within conspiracy theories: I was a mid-level member of a certain high-profile occult religion established here in America and abroad for close to a decade and have been a serious occult scholar for over twenty five years.  As such, I have not only researched topics such as this along with other interested and prominent occultists, but have had access to almost every source that relates to the occult via an extensive and privately maintained database.  (I will not try to suggest that my opinions expressed here are the final words on this subject; indeed, I hope my comments will generate responses from other interested researchers who have additional information that I may not be aware of). 

 This story begins in a small section of San Francisco known as the “Haight-Ashbury,” so-named because that neighborhood stood at the intersection of those two (soon to be world famous) streets.

 In The Beginning, There Was Haight

The decade of the 1960’s marked one of the most influential periods in the history of America.  It became an era for the “waking up” of humanity in the form of new social consciousness, human and civil rights, new religious thought and the exploration of altered states of reality and alternative lifestyles.  And it was in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, California that this new awareness was exemplified in a most vivid manner.

 The Haight-Ashbury area in the 1960’s was a true Mecca for the nation’s disenchanted young people and, as if drawn by some great cosmic force, young people came by the thousands to participate in a great social experiment: a mass exercise in free will.

 Radical politics, free love, new spiritual values, and an “anything goes” mentality were the standards of the day in the Haight and all seemed to be linked by a common thread: the desire to break away from the mental programming of commonly accepted belief systems of the preceding generations which seemed to have become useless and untrue.

 There appeared to be no middle ground regarding the hippie movement and the Haight phenomenon itself.  To “ordinary” people, those involved with the hippie counterculture were either viewed with amusement or seen as frightening or insane.  Accordingly, the attitudes of Americans regarding the “hippies” ranged from joyful support all the way to intense hatred.

 The Haight seemed to move on its own wings, creating its own styles of dress and grooming, original musical sounds, and even a community newspaper called The San Francisco Oracle.  And in many of the Haight’s stores, along with the posters, incense, beads, pipes, and other paraphernalia, were books that focused on Native American shamanism, the European occult and pagan philosophies, Eastern religion and metaphysics, with Zen Buddhism being the prevailing religious leaning of the hippie movement.  Indeed, many aspects of the “occult” and other mystical schools of thought were being revived and studied by a whole new generation.

 As such, the Haight was fertile ground for any new or slightly unusual religion to take root in and it was in 1967, during the so-called “Summer of Love,” that the Process Church of the Final Judgment and Charles Manson showed up on the scene.

 The Family That Slays Together, Stays Together

 In March of 1967, Charles Manson had just been released from a long stretch in prison and quickly immersed himself in the hippie scene of the Haight. It was during this time period and later that Manson crossed paths with a large variety of people, including political types, movie stars, freaks, bikers, occultists, and members of many “alternative” religions.  (People who lived in Haight-Ashbury during this time period and who later wrote about the experience, remember that the Process Church was only one of many “beyond the norm” groups that had taken up residence there). 

While living in the Haight, Manson attracted a sizeable number of hippie followers, most of them young girls, who would form the nucleus of what was to later become known as the “Manson family.” 

 On the evening of August 8, 1969, Charles Manson’s “family” murdered actress Sharon Tate (wife of film director Roman Polanski) and four others at the Tate residence in the Benedict Canyon area of Los Angeles.  The next night, a wealthy couple named Rosemary and Leno LaBianca, who lived in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles near Griffith Park, were also murdered in their home by the same group. 

 In both cases, the victims had been subjected to extremely violent and bloody “over-kill,” having been viscously stabbed, shot and bludgeoned to death.  Adding to this horror, cryptic messages, written in the victim’s own blood, were left on the walls and other areas of the crime scenes and in the case of Leno LaBianca, the word “War” was even carved into his own flesh by one of the killers. 

 Later to become known as the “Tate-LaBianca” murders, the crimes sent a shudder of fear through households all across mainstream America and the world.  Following Manson’s arrest three months after the crimes, both the tabloid and mainstream press issued many sensationalized accounts of the murders.  Many of these early press stories portrayed the crimes as having been committed by wild-eyed hippie flower children armed with knives, who, while high on LSD, had killed the victims in a grisly “ritualistic” fashion, from the outset implying that the murders were occult-related in some way.  For example, a December 2, 1969 story in the Los Angeles Times carried the headline, “Wild Cult Blamed In Tate Slayings,” noting in the subtext how “an occult band of hippies, directed by a leader who calls himself ‘Jesus,’ committed the five killings.”  Yet another news story was headlined with “Wild-Bearded Hippie Chief Key Figure in Tate Murders Probe.” (Italics mine). 

 At the end of a sensational trial that lasted for ten months, Manson and three of his followers, Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel, were convicted for the Tate-LaBianca murders and sentenced to death (later commuted to life imprisonment when the death penalty was held to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court).

That the Manson family was comprised of young hippies-turned-bloody-murderers would later result in a real backlash of hate and fear against those immersed in the “counterculture” (a frightening fact that is discussed in-depth in Chapter 11 of this book).  Indeed, Susan Atkins would be quoted as saying, “We wanted to do a crime that would shock the world, that the world would have to stand up and take notice” and would claim later that the Manson murders had been committed in order to “instill fear into the establishment.” (Prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, would claim at trial that Manson’s motive for the Tate-LaBianca murders was in order to ignite an apocalyptic race war called “Helter Skelter,” as “prophesized” in a Beatles song of the same name).

 Manson, an ex-convict who had studied various occult doctrines and methods while in prison, seemed to possess what many of his followers (and later, even his prosecutor) described as “magical” and “hypnotic” powers.  Possessed of a very strong force of will and a commanding personal presence, Manson had in fact convinced many of his followers that he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and many of them believed that he could actually read their minds.  Manson often referred to himself as both Christ and the Devil, in part because of his identification with the Gnostic god Abraxas, a deity said to transcend both light and darkness and who could personify both “Christ” and “Devil” simultaneously.  (Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi would later call Manson a “Mephistophelean guru” during his trial summation and even claimed that Manson’s hypnotic stare once caused his normally reliable wristwatch to stop functioning).

 Charles Manson’s involvement in the Tate-LaBianca (and other) homicides soon gave rise to the accusation that he and his followers might have had connections with area occult groups, an assertion that has long been a staple for the conspiracy-minded when writing about the case.  And while the Manson “occult connection” does have some basis in fact, no one has ever presented hard evidence that Manson or any of his inner-circle of followers had long-standing affiliations with organized occult or satanic groups prior to or after the murders had occurred.

 In particular, it is Manson’s alleged ties to the Process Church that has fueled much of this sort of speculation, beginning in 1971 with the publication of a book by Ed Sanders and more recently, with Maury Terry’s 1987 book.  (Sanders and Terry, authors of best-selling books about the Manson and Son of Sam cases, are the most blatant advocates of a Process Church/Manson “connection” and both of their claims are examined closely further on in this narrative).  

- End of Excerpt -

You can read the rest of this story - including new interviews with key figures in the Manson/Son of Sam/Process saga - in Labyrinth13.

Charles Manson	Swastika/"Universal Life"  symbol used by Manson	Son of Sam" David Berkowitz	"Occult" symbol drawn on letter Berkowitz sent to newspaper

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