Satanic Panic Part 2

[00:00:00] Disclaimer, this episode features discussions of child harm, animal cruelty, and at least

[00:00:05] one call back to drug use.

[00:00:06] Additionally, this episode is the second part in the series.

[00:00:09] Part one is available anywhere you get your podcasts.

[00:00:12] Welcome back to Scared All the Time.

[00:00:14] I'm Chris Kalari.

[00:00:15] And I'm Ed Vekola.

[00:00:17] In this week, we're presenting part two of our exploration into the satanic panic.

[00:00:21] If you miss part one, it's well worth a listen.

[00:00:23] We lay a lot of groundwork about how and exit to satanic panic part two. What are we? Scared. When are we? All the time. Do it. Do it. Do it. Hush. Now it's time for. High and far. Scan the waters. I think.

[00:01:40] All right.

[00:01:42] As always, we got a little housekeeping up top. First of get a little behind the scenes there and then I might be adding more to the blog soon with a new segment that will be an instant fan favorite,

[00:03:02] I'm sure, but we'll keep that under wraps at the moment.

[00:03:05] Is it feet picks?

[00:03:06] It's not feet picks. about, I don't know, 10 of them off the top, well, not even off the top of my head. But of all, I've probably only ever heard of 10 or 15 of them that really made the news. After this episode, I will have known to work maybe three. I'm learning I'm new to the Satanic Panic game guys. I'd love to take some time to dig up really weird stuff or see if I could get some people who like went through some of these cases to talk about it or something.

[00:04:22] I don't know. But if you guys like the Satanic. Just stay home and listen to scared all the time. I think your boss will understand. You can tell him that we said it's okay. Yeah, we'll write you a note. Oh hell yeah. But before we get to Thanksgiving, or go any deeper in the Satanic Panic iceberg, there's still plenty left to cover on the surface, starting with where we left off last week with the McMarron preschool trial.

[00:05:41] Quick recap for anyone who forgot,

[00:05:43] or didn't quite make it to the end of last week's episode.

[00:05:46] The McMarron preschool case is the most famous case Let's start here. Yeah, please do. I want to hear all about this. So in the summer of 1983, a woman named Judy Johnson made a complaint to the Manhattan Beach Police Department. She called a report that her two-year-old son had been molested at McMarten preschool. And a colleague has to be pretty shocking anywhere, but it was really unexpected in this case because McMarten was the area's premier daycare.

[00:07:00] It was run by a local family founded by a local woman, Virginia McMarten, run by her 1983. Hey, it's my birthday. Literally? Three years prior, but yeah, September 7th. But here's where things get immediately complicated because whatever that follow-up examination found that was enough to get Ray Bucky arrested. And in my research, the most detail I could come up with was that whatever was found in that examination were signs consistent with molestation.

[00:08:23] But whatever it was, Bucky was released the like, God bless Judy Johnson, I don't know that she was the world's most reliable person as she was making some of these

[00:09:41] accusations. Before she died, she would also go on to make

[00:09:44] the accusation that her dog had been molested and that her February 84, that's the point at which Pastor Smith offered their services, and the children's testimony became decidedly demonic. Michelle remembers, and its authors, shaped investigators' questions, prosecutors' agendas, and the public's understanding of the case, specifically in terms stuff was primed. So imagine being a 13-year-old already with your brain filled with all kinds of weird, scary shit and reading things like this. One kid in McMartin said that he'd seen a baby sacrificed in a church. Another said he'd been taken to a graveyard where he helped unearth a

[00:12:20] coffin and saw a body in the coffin that was as witches. And one of my favorites, some students said

[00:13:41] they were flown in a hot air balloon to a place where they watched giraffe get beaten

[00:13:46] to death with a plumber. We're just not working with pipes that can do that. Just not a 984, 984. I'll ask them, what kind of, have you installed anything that I can flush a whole kid? I'll ask them. Had Gooleys come out at this point? Were the Gooleys popping up out of toilets? I'm pretty sure Gooleys is 85, the year of my birth. So I think this might have been inspired by this.

[00:15:01] Maybe, and one kid was even shown a series of photographs

[00:15:05] and identified Chuck Norris as the school was built. But no one ever found any evidence of

[00:16:20] secret chambers or tunnels or anything. But the counts that remained for molesting kids, or was all of that dropped? That's a good question.

[00:17:40] I don't know the counts that were that remained.

[00:17:43] Because even if one of those counts was molesting kids, then fucking I'm not a fan of this

[00:17:47] guy. a crime. Well, wacky, I guess, you know, there's two ways to three actually to get someone's temperature. So that's a little bit on him. It's a little bit on him. Yeah, you know, and look, I know because of the circumstances of our travel right now, I know you didn't have time to maybe get into every single count of this guy in everything. But I think it's pretty safe to assume that he put himself in a position. Hey, oh, Jesus. Now he put himself

[00:19:04] in a position to be a person of interest. Or maybe it is. I think it was actually a TV movie with, I want to say James Woods playing one of the lead detectives or lawyers or something. I haven't seen it. But yeah, it's a ridiculous story that you could truly do a season of a podcast on. But with the case really hinged on, and with so many of these satanic panic cases hinged

[00:20:23] on is the idea that kids don't lie, that they wouldn't make up this horrible stuff I'm like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah something. But in any case, while there isn't really any evidence that anything ever happened to the kids

[00:23:05] at McMarten, there is evidence of how about any crazy shit. And the kids like, yeah. And he's like, what'd you say? And the kids like, no, and I did see him. And he was like, maybe I saw him too. And he just comes back to that, you know, Pokemon thing we talked about, which is like one kid maybe got sick watching the flashing lights in the episode.

[00:24:21] But by the end of that week, you know,

[00:24:23] 89% of the island of Japan, you know,

[00:24:26] had an epileptic seizure.

[00:24:27] So yeah, this was, this is happening and we have to do something about it.

[00:25:40] Like you can't assume that all the parents are just going to go, well, gee, I'm glad

[00:25:43] the cops are being really proactive, even if there's a very small chance any of this

[00:25:46] is true. like this is slander or whatever or libel, like you literally did, you know, my info is out here. No one's gonna unring this bell toothpaste on the tube. Like it's pretty rough judgment. Yeah, and part of the reason I'm presenting all this McMartin preschool stuff is because I think it's a really interesting, somewhat condensed, I say in hour three and a half

[00:27:02] of recording, but a somewhat condensed version

[00:27:05] of like exactly how step by step this stuff happens. all of this seems familiar to them and now you have the ingredients for an investigation operating from a place from both the parents and the cops perspective of we know something satanic happened and now we won't rest until we prove it and add into this everything that we study about the memory of children especially especially children suggests that they're super

[00:28:22] suggestible like multi I think I said're with an adult, they want to not seem or be seen as a little kid do because you know They feel like there's enough of that in their lives or they're not respected or whatever and nor should they be their fucking kids They don't know anything but here come the letters But but yeah, there is probably an element of an element of that psychology probably as well Yeah, and I don't I don't know specifically about the way that each of the kids in the McMarten case was questioned

[00:29:42] but generally to generalize in a lot of these cases where the reports of

[00:30:41] that he's stuck in your friend, Tim. We know, so just say it.

[00:30:43] Just tell us.

[00:30:44] Even more so than kids talking amongst themselves,

[00:30:47] it's police officers taking statements from one kid

[00:30:50] and applying them to the next kid,

[00:30:52] and then that's how it snowballs.

[00:30:54] Because then the next kid says,

[00:30:55] oh yeah, there was a knife, and you know what?

[00:30:57] The devil was there too, you know?

[00:30:59] And then they go to the next kid and say,

[00:31:00] there was the knife and the devil, and then what else?

[00:31:03] And then it just snowballs, and that's how you get to.

[00:31:05] Well, there was a hot air balloon,

[00:31:07] and we did kill kills giraffes

[00:32:20] instead of possibly proving that he touched some kids,

[00:32:23] which would actually keep the kids safe.

[00:32:25] You know, like instead, you're trying to prove

[00:32:27] this crazy stuff that does this X mean, what does these things mean? We have an active killer out there, and it was Frank Black, the main character, his wife is like a child services person, it's great for the show. But the whole episode is about like fucking figure out how to do it without talking to this kid.

[00:33:41] Like that's a level of trauma we're not trying to add here.

[00:33:44] It's more damaging for the kid

[00:33:46] than it is helpful for your case, potentially. I actually, the first TV show that I ever sold was about a woman who had accidentally started a satanic panic case and then as a grown up gets involved in a new missing person's case and she has to sort through what was real for when she was a kid and the memories that still haunt her that may or may not have been real that were just put there by police

[00:35:00] investigators who were listening to this,

[00:36:21] and you have access to a phone or a computer screen.

[00:36:24] Oh my God, dude, I just opened it.

[00:36:27] And the Chicago police of satanic activity. The third level. I think that's when you've become full, you've evolutionary scale, you've become full Satanist. You've become a full Pokemon. But third level has a subtitle of self-styled. So I guess that just means goth. Yeah. If you're a goth, basically, if you like the cure, you're probably well on your way to

[00:37:42] second and first base.

[00:37:44] Absolutely because the characteristics next of a teen involved fundamentalist religious family, low self-esteem, difficulty relating to peers, bored, alienated from family and religion. So a sign of being a characteristic of a teen involved in Satanism could be a male or female teenager who is bored and alienated from family and religion,

[00:39:01] or a male or female teenager who is part

[00:39:04] of a fundamentalist religious family.

[00:39:06] So there's really no, like like the investigations that they led. It's just like the 93 year investigations. Make it longer, make it sloppier here at the Chicago PD. We learn from the district attorney of California, you got to make it long, you got to make it sloppy. So what can be involvement? Number one suicide, two drugs, three murder, four sexual or physical

[00:40:22] abuse, five criminal damage to property, gateway drug, but man, they are all about if you are a teen who shows interest

[00:41:40] in anything, that's bad.

[00:41:42] If you're a teen who's not blindly following the code

[00:41:45] of the school or the church or on the inside of the door, this person just doesn't, you know, they don't want to be left alone, you know. Yeah, number two, writing is revealing problems. Now, the two things that they note as writing that could reveal problems are writing Natas lived in parentheses Satan devil. Well, it's, that's backwards.

[00:43:00] Satan backwards, which is a real tricky way to write things.

[00:43:03] God, it's fucking nightmare.

[00:43:04] Cause it's Satan lived, no, wait, what?

[00:43:06] Okay.

[00:43:07] It's Natas like, I mean, now it's not aim, but like texting slogans, you know, or texting lingo and it's like, LOL means laugh out loud. But you know, some people will post it as like, it means something horrible that your kids are texting about.

[00:44:21] This is what this was.

[00:44:22] Yeah.

[00:44:23] Like, did you check your kid's phone?

[00:44:24] He keeps writing LOL.

[00:44:25] And it was like, yeah, that's fine.

[00:44:26] Oh, is it? is this is coming from a cop, right? And the most advanced way to use the alphabet that I can think of offhand is if you in like a DUI check and they ask you to recite it backwards, like I think if you can do that, which no one can do, but I guess if you're a Satanist, you can do it. Yeah, that's the more advanced. So it's funny coming from them who require advanced stages of the alphabet pretty regularly in the day to day.

[00:45:41] Yeah, detective Simondi caution,

[00:45:43] do not destroy or take items,

[00:45:45] seek professional evaluation,

[00:45:47] don't confront, identify treatment plans. bottom of a fucking lake. Like that's it. And I love that the resource groups on the next page. One of the very few offered resources here is bad. B-A-D-D, which stands for bothered against Dungeons and Dragons. And the last one is just a guy named Mike Wernke in Danville, Connecticut. The rest of them are organizations. But the last is just a guy who lives in Danville.

[00:47:02] And there's no explanation of who he is or what he does.

[00:47:05] It's just like, no idea. The guys have since looked him up and boy oh boy is Mike Warnke a piece of work. Turns out he was this comedian who was viewed as a quote unquote expert on Satanism in the 1980s before being exposed as a fraud by a Christian magazine in 1992. Well, he sure sounds like a garbage person and completely makes sense on this list. Anyone know Mike? Get us in charge with Mike.

[00:48:23] We gotta get Mike. We need to get Mike on the show.

[00:48:26] I need to know how many kids. It was just kids were drawing circles, fucking nonstop. Yeah. So, and then there's there's trail markers, there's a sample altar that shows you how an altar might be laid out, inverted cross of satanic justice that might be carved into a victim's chest. Oh yeah. Which I would like to point out involves a dead murder victim which is a far cry from being a teenager

[00:49:43] who listens to heavy metal music.

[00:49:44] Yeah, I think you have a bigger issue if it's like,

[00:49:46] yeah, you know, I read your material some of the body markings you may come across do not be limited by this list as you may find many other markings indicative of involvement in ritualistic criminal activity. I do love that. It's okay. I know we mentioned circles, but the thing about Satan is he will pop up in everything you see. So it's a real like don't be limited if you're a hammer,

[00:51:00] everything's a nail. Yeah. And there's that in semi-signix closing time. You don't have to defend it because One Direction, I'm pretty sure, plays it every concert. Yes. I was going to mention that. Like, they actually, Weeds had a big resurgence because One Direction started covering Teen

[00:52:22] H.

[00:52:23] Dirtbag.

[00:52:24] And I believe Weeds actually opened for One Direction on a bunch of big UK shows.

[00:52:27] So they've had a big comeback. singer-songwriter of Weetus started finding his musical identity. A 17-year-old who lived on his block, which you may remember from the song, he lives on my block, he drives an eye rock, and then Ricky Queso lured his friend Gary into the woods and stabbed him to death, supposedly in the name of Satan. And it was absolutely a really brutal murder, no questions

[00:53:40] about it. Queso stabbed Gary between 17 and 38 times and possibly cut out his eyeballs, but they but it's a creepy name. And when you get a little bit of that like column by in trench coat mafia stuff there, or nothing to do with saying. Yeah. And Ricky was, it's in the record. His parents admitted him to the South Oaks psychiatric hospital, better known as, I shit you not the Amityville Asylum in Amityville, New York for drug rehab and psychiatric care. And in the year prior to the murder,

[00:55:01] K.S.O. had also been arrested for digging

[00:55:03] into a colonial era grave inside a local cemetery. ever wrote the song. The phrase would go on to help him launch this career, but so many teenagers weren't so lucky. Like the West Memphis 3 we discussed before. They were just three guys, some of whom were not fully mentally sound, who were in the heavy metal of comic books, and ended up spending decades in prison for a murder they didn't commit. And I think it's

[00:56:21] really fascinating that literally the guy who wrote Teen they were like, we'll put a record scratch over the word gun.

[00:57:40] It ran up against so much crap.

[00:57:43] Misguided bad advice about how he should censor the song on his block. Like it's so silly that he had to go through that. And we also have to remember at the time it was written, I mean, before it really came out to us. Like, I know America has changed so much. Like my niece and nephews and my good friends kids are quite literally, have some very different school experience than we ever had. But like at the time that was written,

[00:59:01] that wouldn't even cross his mind as to be controversial.

[00:59:04] Because there wasn't such a thing as an epidemic

[00:59:06] of school shootings in this country.

[00:59:08] There wasn't anything like one had the Internet. So of course you couldn't go look up if the CEO of Proctor and Campbell actually said this on Murph Griffin or not. But what's really scary is that now we episode, the monsters are due on Maple Street. Which is that weird, mass hysteria, how did we get here, there's no proof of anything, why are we at each other's throats without even really knowing what's going on, and whether it's the McCarthy era, Communist shit, or just general Cold War crap,

[01:01:41] followed by, I don't know, fucking putting explicit lyrics

[01:01:45] on CDs in the 90s and early 2000s, But no, I mean, literally being the victim of a satanic panic investigation is more likely than being the victim of Satanists and being the target of a satanic panic investigation is fairly low. So like practically and immediately I would place it low. I feel like maybe that's a little bit just interrupt for a moment. I wonder if how much of this changes if we had kids, just because if our kids were anything

[01:03:02] like us, they would absolutely be the targets of a satanic panic.

[01:03:05] Like in the next satanic panic, whatever and that's why I'm obsessed with it because it it just feels like it will always happen in

[01:04:24] Some form or another and maybe Ed that's because the devil exists