http://paranoiamagazine.com/archives-3/the-process-church-of-the-final-judgment-and-the-manson-family-2/
The Process Church of the Final Judgment and the Manson Family
The Robert F. Kennedy Connection
by Adam Gorightly
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 in 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 thirty years ago—continues to
operate secretly in six major U.S. cities. Terry claims that The Process
Church 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 Children for the
series of murders, in the same way that Charles Manson may have been
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 murders. 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, including Berkowitz himself, Terry learned that
one Son of Sam murder was videotaped, and that the cameraman, Ron
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 W.
Mentzer, an “occult superstar” and hit-man who moved through the same
late-1960s 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.”
The Mayfair Mindbenders
In 1963, Robert DeGrimston Moore met Mary Anne MacLean at the Hubbard
Institute of Scientology in London where they both worked as auditors
and instructors. This relationship led to marriage, and the pair
eventually left Scientology, taking with them some of Scientology
founder L. Ron Hubbard’s principles and methods. They incorporated them
into a new group called “Compulsions Analysis,” which used a technique
or “process” similar to Scientology.
Eventually, “Compulsions Analysis” evolved into The Process Church of the Final Judgment. According to Ed Sanders in
The Family,
during his stint with Scientology, DeGrimston had attained the level of
“Clear,” just as Charles Manson claimed to have reached the same lofty
level while studying Scientology in prison. The textbook Scientology
definition of “Clear” is “an individual who can be
at cause knowingly and
at will over mental matter, energy, space and time (MEST).”
In March of 1966, The Process moved into a mansion on Balfour Place
in the Mayfair district of London, followed by twenty-five young
acolytes, who turned over all their worldly possessions to the
DeGrimstons. Garbed in matching black uniforms—consisting of tailor-made
magician’s capes with the Mendez goat of Satan stitched in red on the
back—The Process sponsored public gatherings during this period. For a
half-pound admittance fee, the faithful were treated to telepathy
circles, midnight meditations, “I Ching” interpretations, group
encounter games (for instance, one called “Rape”), and guidance in the
Tarot and Kabala. Many of these activities took place in a coffee bar
called Satan’s Cavern, located in the basement of Balfour Place.
Later in 1966, the group moved their headquarters to Xtul, on the
Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, and there things took a decidedly spiritual
turn, the resulting cosmology of which consisted of four co-equal
entities: Christ, Jehovah, Lucifer and Satan; each representing a
different spiritual path that a Process member could adopt. Some
members took these archetypes symbolically, while others—it is
said—began to worship the actual deities. It was during this period that
DeGrimston came to fancy himself the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. It
was this Christ-like persona he affected in photos of the time,
projecting all the trappings of Jesus come again, with beard and
messianic countenance staring righteously upon humankind.
At Xtul, The Process acquired an estate, which included four miles of
seashore, a palm tree jungle, a lagoon, and various wooden huts. In
November 1966, lawyers representing the parents of converted Processeans
flew to Mexico in the prospect of bringing back their sons and
daughters. An article in the
London Sunday Telegraph entitled “The Mindbenders of Mayfair” dealt with the return of the youths from their jungle hideaway.
After their Xtul sojourn, The Process returned to London and made
forays into the pop music field, trying to attract into their ranks the
likes of the Beatles and Mick Jagger. During this period they became
very adept at the art of “End Times” proselytizations, holding lectures,
demonstrations and outdoor rant sessions in Hyde Park. They also began
publishing a magazine to further the cause called, quite fittingly,
Process,
which adorned its covers with pictures of battlefield death imagery.
Around this time, they managed to attract Mick Jagger’s girlfriend,
Marianne Faithful, into the fold. In issue #3 of
Process, she
appeared on the cover, lying down, as if dead, and holding a rose.
Earlier, Jagger himself appeared on the cover of another Process
one-shot magazine,
Freedom of Expression.
In “The Death” issue of
Process from 1971, a brief article
by Charles Manson appeared, entitled “Pseudo-profundity in Death,” which
Charlie penned during the course of the Tate/LaBianca trial. In this
article, Manson described death as “total awareness … Coming to Now …
and Peace from this world’s madness and paradise in my own self.” While
The Process took measures to distance themselves from the Manson camp,
the inclusion of Manson’s essay only further muddies the waters of an
alliance that, at the very least, shared many of the same philosophical
tenets.
Unholy Alliances
In 1967, Robert DeGrimston and other Process members descended upon
San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district during the Summer of Love,
taking lease of a property located at 407 Cole Street. Meanwhile,
Charlie Manson and his girls lived at 636 Cole Street, a mere two blocks
away. One of the more controversial assertions I’ve heard suggesting
contact between Manson and The Process comes courtesy of John Parker’s
Polanski,
which claims that Manson was a regular visitor at The Process
headquarters on Cole Street, “reaching the fourth of the six levels of
initiation, that of ‘prophet.’” At the end of 1968, he was established
as a leader of a group which he called “Satan’s Slaves.” During their
Haight Ashbury period, Parker contends, The Process also attempted to
form a union with Anton LaVey, high priest and founder of the San
Francisco-based Church of Satan. However, these efforts were
unsuccessful.
Through his own calculated Satanic-related media events, LaVey
attracted the attention of such Hollywood bigshots as Sammy Davis, Jr.
and sexpot Jayne Mansfield. Through these Hollywood connections, LaVey
made inroads into the movie industry and was on the payroll of both
The Mephisto Waltz and Roman Polanski’s
Rosemary’s Baby.
In the latter, LaVey appeared on screen as the Devil himself, bedding
down comely Mia Farrow and impregnating her with the literal spawn of
Satan.
Eerily enough, one young beauty LaVey attracted was Susan Atkins, who appeared topless in his
Witches’ Sabbath
show playing the fitting role of a vampire. Three years later, Atkins
would confess to licking blood from the knife that she used to kill
actress Sharon Tate, when her theatrical vampire fantasy became reality
during the Tate-LaBianca murder spree. Photos from this period show
Atkins in her predestined vampire role, wearing a long, open black robe,
revealing her nude body, as mock blood dripped from her lips. Later, of
course, she fell into the loving arms of Father Manson, and the rest is
dark history.
In another strange twist of fate,
Rosemary’s Baby was filmed
in New York City at Manhattan’s Dakota Apartments, a massive gothic
building that later was the home and sacrificial death site of former
Beatle John Lennon, co-writer of a song that influenced Manson, “Helter
Skelter.” (see Paranoia, issue 33)
The Process Church opened a chapter in Los Angeles in early 1968.
They stayed in public view until a few days after Robert Kennedy’s
assassination on June 5, 1968, after which they dropped mysteriously
from sight. By this time, The Process had become subdivided into three
sub-groups: the Luciferians, the Jehovans and the Satanists.
The Luciferian branch were fun-loving hedonists, celebrating
sensuality. Conversely, the Jehovan branch were uptight, narrow-minded
zealots, both anti-sex and austere, who beat each other as punishment,
and were into self-flagellation. The Satanists were both cold and
calculating, on the violent end of The Process cosmological spectrum.
According to an individual’s personal desires, one could become an
advocate of any of the branches of the group; it didn’t really matter,
because in the long run they were all going to unite during the End
Times.
Some observers have described The Process as a society dedicated to
aiding and abetting the end of the world by stirring up murder, violence
and chaos. In The Process’ End Times scenario, they would survive the
wrath of the apocalypse as the chosen people, which was identical to the
Manson Family worldview. The Process philosophy was summed up in Robert
DeGrimston’s 1967 book
As It Is:
Christ said: Love thine enemy. Christ’s enemy was Satan and Satan’s
Enemy was Christ. Through love, enmity is destroyed. Through love, saint
and sinner destroy the enmity between them. Through love, Christ and
Satan have destroyed their enmity and come together for the End. Christ
to judge, Satan to execute judgment.
It was this marriage of Heaven and Hell that Charles Manson grooved
with. Manson’s cosmology—though similar to The Process—projected a more
simplistic dualism, as he was known to his followers as both Satan and
Christ. Like The Process, Manson preached the Second Coming, and that
when Christ returned this time, it would be the Romans (i.e., the
Establishment) who went up on the cross in his place. Following is a
list of other similarities shared by the Manson Family and The Process:
Manson spoke frequently of the bottomless pit; The Process, of the bottomless void.
Within its organization, The Process called itself “the family,” and
referred to its members as brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers.
Fear was a focal point for both The Process and Manson. A special issue of
Process
magazine dealt exclusively with the topic. “Fear is beneficial,” wrote
the author of one article. “Fear is the catalyst of action. It is the
energizer, the weapon built into the game in the beginning, enabling a
being to create an effect upon himself, to spur himself on to new
heights and to brush aside the bitterness of failure.”
The Process Church symbol was that of an inverted swastika, the very same symbol Manson later carved into his forehead.
Both The Process and Manson recruited biker groups. The two biker
gangs closest to the Manson Family and The Process were the Satan Slaves
and the Straight Satans.
Bad Vibrations
The Process, like Charles Manson, sought out rich and successful
people. In addition to John Phillips and Cass Elliot of the Mamas and
the Papas, they approached record producer Terry Melcher around the same
time that Melcher first met Manson. In fact, author Maury Terry
suggests that it was at John Phillips’ parties that the paths of Roman
Polanski, Sharon Tate, and the rest of the unfortunate Cielo Drive crowd
initially crossed paths with the Manson Family.
Manson had other celebrity connections. Prior to the Tate-LaBianca
murders, Beach Boy Dennis Wilson is said to have been a Manson
supporter. The Manson Family, in fact, lived in Wilson’s house for a few
months, supported by Wilson, and Manson recorded some songs at the home
studio of Beach Boy, Brian Wilson. However, Dennis Wilson soon became
frightened by Manson and fled the rented house. Manson and friends
remained but were soon evicted by the landlord. Nevertheless, a song by
Manson, with slightly altered lyrics, appears on the Beach Boy’s album
20/20. The original song was prophetically titled “Cease to Exist,” but it is called “Never Learn Not To Love” on the album.
When The Process arrived in Los Angeles in early 1968, John Phillips
put them in touch with real estate agent Artie Aarons. Once a week, the
Processeans would go around cleaning and repairing various properties
owned by Aarons. In return for their services, Aarons let The Process
use a large, two-story house in south central L.A. In the following
weeks, The Process members—while working for Aarons—visited the old John
Barrymore mansion at 1301 Summit Ridge Drive, which was located several
blocks down the hill from where Roman Polanski was renting a house from
actress Patty Duke at 1600 Summit Ridge. Manson and his minions also
lived for a short period in a shack on Summit Ridge Drive.
According to Ed Sanders, not long after moving into the Summit Ridge
house, Sharon and Roman gave a housewarming party, where a strange event
occurred involving Roman and some vicious dogs from down the hill.
Apparently, the Polanski’s had agreed to take care of Patty Duke’s sheep
dog, and the dog had a habit of getting loose. On the night of the
party, the sheep dog once again bounded away, and Roman Polanski went
after it.
Somewhere down the hill, Polanski encountered a group of vicious
German Shepherds belonging to—as Sanders phrased it after a libel suit
by DeGrimston—”English occultists who were in America to promote the end
of the world.” Somehow, during his attempt to retrieve Patty Duke’s
pooch, Polanski got locked in a garage trying to escape the cult’s dog
pack, and managed to break a rear window out and escape up the hillside.
In
Helter Skelter, Vincent Bugliosi recounted how Manson had
been bragging about a relationship with The Process, until one day he
was paid a visit in jail by two brethren of the church, “Father John”
and “Brother Matthew.” After their departure, Manson seems to have
clammed up for good about The Process, and since then has made no
further comments. Prior to the visit by these two mysterious Processean
MIB’s, Manson was asked by Bugliosi if he knew Robert DeGrimston, and
his reply was to the effect, “He and I are one and the same.” After
their visit with Manson, the two Process members met with Bugliosi and
assured him that Manson and DeGrimston had never met.
The RFK Assassination
In his 1973 book,
America Bewitched, Daniel Logan presented
the theory that black magic cults were responsible for Robert F.
Kennedy’s assassination. The cults in question, which Logan pinpointed,
were “100 percent white, hated the black race, and felt that the way
world chaos could be ignited was to incite whites against blacks.”
According to Logan, persons belonging to “black-arts churches” were seen
in full public view, black hoods and all, on the streets of Southern
California communities right up until the RFK assassination, after which
they suddenly vanished from sight. Logan went on to list several
“coincidences” swirling around RFK’s assassination:
- Many black-arts California-based cults such as The Process Church
taught the destruction of America through chaos and mass violence.
- Members of these cults generally hated blacks.
- Robert Kennedy worked for the advancement of blacks and was generally liked, trusted, and respected by them.
- Black-arts cults were mainly localized in the Los Angeles area.
- Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles.
- Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert Kennedy, had studied mysticism
and was a devotee (albeit a misguided one) of Mme. Blavatsky, the woman
who founded the Theosophical Society, many of whose beliefs were not
only mystically but politically inspired. (While living in India, she
openly denounced the pacifist ways of Mahatma Gandhi, who was himself
eventually assassinated.)
- Charles Manson, while in prison in the 1960s, had also studied the
occult teachings of Mme. Blavatsky, along with those of other mystical
personalities.
- The night before Robert Kennedy was murdered he had his last dinner with Sharon Tate and her husband, Roman Polanski.
- A few months later, Sharon Tate and her friends were killed by Charles Manson’s family.
Rumors Writ in Blood
Ed Sanders, in the first Dutton edition of
The Family: The Story of Charles Manson’s Dune Buggy Attack Battalion,
suggested that The Process Church had “a baleful influence” on Sirhan
Sirhan. During the spring of 1968, Sirhan had visited clubs in Hollywood
on the same turf where The Process was proselytizing their
doom-and-gloom philosophy. Furthermore, Sirhan talked several times
prior to Kennedy’s death about visiting a certain occult group in
London.
Among the rumors disseminated by Sanders was that a Process member
named Lloyd worked as a chef at the Ambassador Hotel at the time of
RFK’s assassination. Perhaps it was only coincidence, but Sirhan visited
a friend in the Ambassador Hotel kitchen only a day before the
assassination. In the revised 2002 edition of
The Family,
Sanders recounted a 1974 investigation into “a satanic group of English
origin” conducted by an Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)
criminal investigator named Richard Smith. After Sanders’ publisher,
Dutton, lost a libel suit to The Process Church over the first edition
of
The Family, all editions thereafter contained this oblique reference.
According to Sanders, an investigator working for him contacted Smith
and was allowed to read his report, which stated, “English satanist
cult members invited Sirhan Sirhan to a number of parties that were
sponsored by television people in Los Angeles, and that one of the
parties took place at Sharon Tate’s residence. At these parties, it was
averred, sexual and ritualistic activities were reported to have
occurred.” According to the INS report, this “English satanic group”
purportedly took out a contract with Manson to kill Sharon Tate because
of something she overheard at these parties regarding Sirhan Sirhan.
As Sanders alleges, in December 1968, Manson Family member Bruce
Davis went on a pilgrimage to England where he spent roughly five
months. While in London, the rumor goes, Davis was employed by the
Church of Scientology, working in the mailroom and studying Scientology
courses in his spare time. The Church of Scientology fired Davis after a
couple of weeks because of drug use. According to a homicide
investigator close to the Tate-LaBianca case, Davis began hanging out at
the Mayfair townhouse of The Process Church. Davis later returned to
England in May of 1969 in the company of five women alleged to be
witches.
According to Sanders, Joel Pugh, husband of Manson follower Sandra
Good, accompanied Bruce Davis on his first trip to London. On December
1, 1969, Pugh’s decomposing body was found in the Targarth Hotel in
London, lying naked on his back with a sheet covering his lower body.
His throat had been cut with razor blades, there were slash marks on
both wrists and his blood had been used to inscribe “backwards writing”
and “comic book drawings” on a mirror in the room. Scotland Yard
investigators ruled the death a suicide, but when Inyo County
(California) District Attorney Frank Fowles learned of the death, he
made official inquiries through Interpol to check Davis’s visa.
Officials confirmed that Davis had been in London in April of that
year, and had been there more recently, but they had no official record
of the exact dates. Davis was next reported to be in Los Angeles in
February 1970, according to Sanders, when he was questioned in Inyo
County on auto theft charges, then released. Davis then disappeared once
again, resurfacing on December 2, 1970, four days after the mysterious
disappearance of Manson Defense Attorney Ron Hughes, who was later found
dead.
According to Bill Nelson in
Manson Behind The Scenes, on
November 21, 1969, the corpses of two Scientology members—15-year old
James Sharp and 19-year old Doreen Gaul—were discovered in a Los Angeles
alleyway, each stabbed in excess of fifteen times. The two reportedly
lived in a Scientology commune, and it has been alleged that Gaul once
dated Bruce Davis. When detective Earl Deemer of the LAPD arrived on the
murder scene, his first reaction was, “The people who did this, did
Sharon Tate.” This murder was later attributed to the infamous Zodiac
killer. (In a September 29, 2003 article in the
New York Post, Mentzer (aka Manson II) was linked to the Zodiac killings.)
News reports placed Doreen Gaul, prior to her death, at the same
residence where Bruce Davis was living: reportedly, a Scientology
commune at 1032 South Bonnie Brae in Los Angeles. According to Nelson,
the “Manson Family bus” was parked on this street on several occasions.
While Davis had admitted to living in this “Scientology commune,” he
denied ever having met Doreen Gaul
.
Rumors have long run rampant concerning alleged ties between Charles
Manson and the Church of Scientology. Not long after Manson’s arrest for
the Tate-LaBianca murders, strange tips began trickling into a
prominent west coast magazine concerning a rumored Manson-Scientology
connection (Cabot). This spurred the Church of Scientology to offer a
reward to anyone with information leading to the conviction of the
libeler/slanderer who had spread the still unsubstantiated rumors of
Manson’s involvement in Scientology.
©2005 Adam Gorightly, author of
Death Cults, published by Sisyphus Press, P.O. Box 10495, State College, PA. 16805-0495 (available at
http://www.wingtv.net/commonsense/deathcults.html,
$7 US postage paid, $10 Canada). In this underground classic, Gorightly
links cults like The Process Church of the Final Judgment and the
Manson Family to elements of the underworld and intelligence
communities, brushing back the cobwebs of the occult to reveal a truly
disturbing story that continues to haunt us today. Gorightly is also the
author of
The Shadow Over Santa Susana: Black Magic, Mind Control and the Manson Family Mythos,
http://www.mansonmythos.com.
References
Bugliosi, Vincent.
Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders, W. W. Norton, Reprint, 2001.
Cabot, Tracy, ed.,
Inside The Cults, Holloway House, Los Angeles, 1970.
DeGrimston, Robert.
As It Is, 1967.
Gorightly, Adam. “We All Live in a Yellow Submarine: The Manson Family and the Beatles.”
Paranoia, Issue 33, Fall 2003.
Logan, Daniel.
America Bewitched: The Rise of Black Magic and Spiritism, Morrow, 1974.
Nelson, Bill.
Manson Behind The Scenes, Pen Power Publications, 1997.
Parker, John.
Polanski, Orion, 1995.
Sanders, Ed.
The Family, Thunder’s Mouth, updated 2002.
Terry, Maury.
The Ultimate Evil: An Investigation into America’s Most Dangerous Satanic Cult, Doubleday, 1st edition, 1987.
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