It's hard to find a bad book by Lawrence Wright—while I can't say I've read all of his work, I can say I've yet to find one to criticize. From The Looming Tower to Going Clear to Thirteen Days in September, he's a damn impressive writer and investigative journalist who writes fluidly and with a firm grip on facts and sources. Like Jane Mayer, though they don't have the same focuses, he is among the best of today's investigative journalists.
The ominously titled Remembering Satan, a bit like David Herbert Donald's biography of Thomas Wolfe, seems a bit of an odd choice to write that's out of his wheelhouse. Not that this is a shortcoming—his research is as thorough as ever. Personally, I am also a pinch familiar with the area the book was set in, though I was not aware of the Thurston County ritual abuse case until I was much older. Olympia is on the drive my parents would take from Edmonds to Lake Cushman, so we stopped in Olympia on occasion, mostly for Black Friday or meeting some maternal family.
Anyway, what makes this case interesting?
It has ties to the Satanic Panic.
The book begins as the daughters of local Republican Party County Chairman and Chief Civil Deputy of the Sheriff's Department Paul Ingram report that they have been the victims of "satanic ritual abuse," a phenomenon of the now-discredited, and afore-mentioned Satanic Panic of the 80s and 90s.
Like many cases involved with the Satanic Panic, we see a progression: 'recovered memory' via questionable means (hypnosis, for instance) and escalating, changing stories. At some point, after being mentally broken down by the lengthy interrogations and the overwhelming situation, Paul Ingram himself admits to his guilt and begins to confess to other crimes, ballooning the details provided by his daughters to provide a bigger, more comprehensive glimpse of more abuse, on a bigger scale, involving even more heinous crimes.
By the end of it, we find out he has taken part in innumerable satanic ceremonies, murdering over two dozen babies, and forcing a near-term abortion, among other crimes like rape and sexual abuse.
Seems like a slam dunk case, right?
As if. In their recounting, first the daughters' stories began to not align and there were just too many details that made the case fall apart. Then the stories the father began to confess didn't add up, either. This isn't necessarily surprising: cases often are complex and the pieces have to come together, bit by bit, with reflection, contemplation, checking dates and details and reports and ramifications.
As I was taught growing up, "Oh what a tangled web we weave." I don't think mom knew the second half of that phrase, which is, "When first we practice to deceive."
Memory can be fallible, of course, but so long as you're relying on what you remember as it happened: it generally comes back. If you're lying, it doesn't because your mind has to interrupt a natural memory to inject a fake one, a bit like Slughorn's false memory in Half-Blood Prince. Probably would've been nicer if the people who drilled me on that lesson weren't constantly lying.
How does this tie back to Remembering Satan?
It's not just the contradictions that begin to perturb the investigators and stymy the case; it's a lack of evidence.
For example, some of the alleged physical abuse included stories of knives and, I believe, whips: the sort of implements that would have left deep scarring that would not recover quickly. But there was no scar tissue that was consistent with that.
Then there were other problems, these ones even more considerable: there would be some evidence of a late-term abortion, if for nothing else due to the nature of the bodily changes a woman undergoes. But no one had seen her pregnant. And medical examinations were able to tell that her body had not gone through the very body-altering process of a pregnancy.
In addition, whenever the alleged dump sites for bodies of those sacrificed are searched: nothing. And no, scavenging critters in the Olympic National Forest wouldn't account for the complete lack of evidence—there's a reason 'true' disappearance cases intrigue people from Amelia Earhart and Ettore Marjorana to Jimmy Hoffa. (And, as forensics advance, it's very hard not to rewatch some old Unsolved Mysteries after Dateline and immediately think, "This is not an unsolved disappearance, this has 'he murdered his wife' written all over it.")
The case seemed to be falling apart.
But Ingram ends up convicted and sentenced; even after the flaws in the case began coming out, his appeals appear to have been of limited success with the Clemency Board; and it was only in 2003 that he was released.
So what changed things when this investigation seemed about to go from explosive to a dud and, quite possibly, might've helped defuse the Satanic Panic a bit earlier?
"What set this tinderbox ablaze was a discovery made thousands of miles away, in the Mexican border town of Matamoros, in April 1989. Police uncovered a ritual slaughterhouse on a ranch operated by a gang of drug smugglers. Thirteen mutilated corpses were exhumed, including that of twenty-one-year-old University of Texas student Mark Kilroy, who had been kidnapped as he walked across the international bridge toward Brownsville, Texas, a month before. The cult blended elements of witchcraft and Afro-Caribbean religions... The Matamoros cult lent an air of reality to the satanic hysteria that had taken root in the media. Agents for Geraldo Rivera and Oprah Winfrey were quickly on the scene."
This particular true crime might ring a bell—it was the focus of an early book review of Edward Humes' Buried Secrets, about Adolfo Constanzo and the Matamoros cult, which, well, the post discusses the religions he drew inspiration from.
Of note, however, are two anecdotes from Humes' book: one where Constanzo mockingly remarks to his followers that they have been misidentified as satanists when they worship the Palo deity Kadiempembe. Speaking archetypically in the Jungian sense, yes, there is heavy overlap between the figures of Satan and Kadiempembe, but there is also importance in noting the difference.
As mentioned in the previous post: it was a professor who was able to spot the signs of Palo, realize the rough outlines of his belief system, and figure out how to antagonize Constanzo into revealing himself (admittedly in a violent shootout that endangered a lot of innocent people). It was not the destruction of the nganga that magically triggered Constanzo's meltdown—it was the psychological impact of seeing this totem, which he had placed so much value in, being destroyed on national TV that overwhelmed him mentally and ensured he would't escape.
An incongruous metaphor: seeing the loss of the nganga on TV was a bit like Peanuts' Linus having his security blanket taken away.
The second anecdote recounted is the cold-blooded murder of people who confess to being Christians, which Constanzo mocks, describing those who don't follow his warped version of Palo as less than animals, before callously shooting them.
Disgusting behavior in both cases, and in the larger scope: the Ingram case could have been the fading last breaths of the Satanic Panic and allowed the conspiracy to dwindle sooner, but the crimes committed by Constanzo and his cult poured fuel on the fire thanks to the media feeding frenzy. I believe Wright makes this argument or at least this is how I read it (and would agree): that media feeding frenzy for ratings helped to extend the duration of the now-discredited Satanic Panic.
This is part of why some of us might recall growing up and hearing, in the mid-to-late 90s or even early aughts, about things like Pokemon, and Harry Potter, or Dungeons and Dragons being "satanic" or "witchcraft," though you can never discount the influence of nutter fundies.
Returning to the book, after the above quote we are treated to a summary of Geraldo* a few days later where he alludes to the Satanic Panic when he describes the Matamoros killings as "nothing viewers of this program haven't heard before," before bringing on an FBI agent to say "the next burial ground will be in Mason County, Washington. We've located a number of burial grounds in Mason County." (Spoiler: he is lying; no such burial grounds have been found in the last 35 years. Misunderstanding and ignorance fester and grow).
Mason County is quite beautiful, however—passed through Thurston most often for Black Friday or rare maternal family visits, Shelton was the more common grocery stop after Fred Meyer and later Walmart moved in, and Hoodsport is the last little town before turning to go up to Lake Cushman.
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*Kurt Vonnegut, author of many books including Slaughterhouse-Five, once remarked of once son-in-law Geraldo: "He's obviously a scumbag, because he started making love to other people and betraying my daughter and her innocence from the very beginning. If I see Jerry again, I'll spit in his face." (Source: Charles J. Shields biography).
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