Maury Terry (1946–2015)

The Ultimate Evil is an excellent true crime novel that explores possible connections between David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz, Charles Mason, Satanic Cults, and the underground snuff film industry. Maury Terry supplies the reader with exhaustive details to support his theories, and makes some pretty wild and outrageous claims as he connects the dots. Even if you're skeptical of the Satanic Cult angle, Terry provides plenty of evidence to make even his wilder claims at least plausible, and portrays a side of the Son of Sam case you've probably never encountered before.… (altro)

There are some books I give away after reading, but some books where I wonder if releasing such trash into the wild is a disservice to an unsuspecting public. This book falls into the later category.

I read the book because I have some interest in the Satanic Panic of the 1970s-1980s, into which era this book falls — with a rather resounding thump. The author, a journalist from Westchester County, a middle to upper-class suburban area due north of gritty NYC, became convinced that the Son of Sam murders were not random and not the act of a lone gunman but were "hits" carried out by a nationwide network of blood-thirsty Satanists. The author Maury Terry, in search of his conspiracy, links David Berkowitz with murders and murderers literally from coast to coast, including everyone's favorite monster, Charles Manson.

Did Manson and Berkowitz know each other? Of course not. But A knew B who knew C and D, and once D and F were in the same state, plus G owned a German shepherd, and everyone knew those Process Church of the Final Judgment people where into owning German shepherds, plus C was at a "homo" club in NYC which was sometimes frequented by H and J, and H had connections with K, who was involved with cocaine dealers in LA, and K turned up dead, but L and B both once hung out with M and N who somewhere somehow knew O and P who knew Q, R, and S in Minot, ND who claimed that they were into the occult. And T, U, V knew for sure occultists slaughtered dogs while the murders of W, X, Y and Z, who were deeply involved in the bloody cocaine trafficking scene, once ate a burger in the same diner that A was known to frequent. So obviously, they were murdered because they knew too much about what those homo, dog-killing, snuff-film making Process Church occultists were up to.

I want to say you can't make this stuff up, but obviously, you can.

Terry displays the logic of conspiracy theorists everywhere where the slightest shred of connection becomes more significant than the most obvious evidence of another cause. Oh, show biz people in LA are into the occult! That must mean the murder of so-and-so who had ties to the movie business or the music business (in LA! what a shocker!) had much more to do with a nationwide satanic cult with its own hitmen than with the copious amounts of cocaine that was being dealt and consumed at the same time. It's so obvious — are you blind? There are Druids in California, ferpetessake, and the OTO! The cults are coming to kill us all!

Now, the Process Church was a curious group to be sure, but having known one or two myself and being familiar with their history, it is hard to take these wild accusations of murder and mayhem seriously. Also, my late husband was both a Druid and an OTO member in California and an occultist in NYC at times that overlap with many of the events in the book. I've been an occultist myself for some 40 years, and as it happens some of the training materials presented to me originated with a gentleman who at the time he compiled them was stationed in MINOT! And my late husband was known to frequent the very occult bookstore in Manhattan connected with... well, you get the picture, I hope. Mr. Terry surely would be busily investigating us had we somehow fit into his elaborate theories.

What made made me particularly sad was the end of the book, where the clueless Mr. Terry claims to have risen to the status of occult expert, presenting programs to law enforcement groups across the country. I've seen some of the material that got passed out at these events; inaccurate is being kind. An awful lot of good people were hurt during the Satanic Panic years, and hyperbolic conspiracy theorists such as Terry have to shoulder the blame for much of it.

In the end, he finds nothing but conspiracy, while the horrible blood-drinking cult remains firmly unexposed. I wonder if in later years he found it ironic that the remains of the horrendous, German-shepherd-slaughtering Process Church morphed into the Best Friends Animal Society in Utah. You know, the large, no-kill shelter that rescued pit bulls from the Michael Vick dog-fighting scandal? Funny he didn't mention the shelter in the book, which was up and running during Mr. Terry's exhaustive cult-searching research.

I don't recommend the book unless you have a fascination with both the Satanic Panic era and conspiracy theorists. Even then, it might not be worth slogging through 600-plus pages. Maybe it's best to just let it dissolve on its own in the dustbin of history.… (altro)