"The Ultimate Evil" Revisited by Starship

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q:  You know where this is going, right?

A:  I’m not sure.

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

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

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

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

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

Links:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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