The Most Dangerous Animal of All (16 page)

The civil rights movement was in full swing and had finally resulted in the passage of the federal Civil Rights Act. Even with the act being signed into law, African Americans had to struggle to get a small foothold on the ladder of success. Rotea knew when he was first hired at the department that his climb would be a difficult one, but he dreamed of becoming a homicide investigator, of being a part of the team that tried to solve the numerous murders that plagued the city by the bay.

Rotea had moved with his family from Texas to the Fillmore District of San Francisco in the 1930s. Back then, the Fillmore was the logical place to move to if you were black. Filled with immigrants from all over the world, here a black child could fit in with the other kids. That was a little more difficult in other areas of the city, but the Fillmore was not like other neighborhoods. From its inception, it had a different pulse, a distinctive beat that could be heard every night in the jazz clubs and theaters that sprang up along its streets.

Rotea grew up on those streets in the 1940s and ’50s. He knew where he could go and where he couldn’t. His parents had told him stories about how they had not been allowed to go into the clubs and restaurants in their own neighborhood because they were people of color. In reaction, African Americans began opening their own clubs, the music that streamed from open doors so powerful that they began to attract attention. Residents from other districts around the city began to make their way to the Fillmore, drawn there by black artists such as Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, and Ella Fitzgerald, who demanded respect through their talent.

And while the Fillmore District was nothing like living in the South for African Americans at the time, Rotea grew up with a strong sense of what was right and wrong. And discrimination against African Americans because of their color was simply wrong in his opinion. From an early age, he set out to effect change in the mind-set of white San Franciscans. He determined that he would be the best he could be at whatever he did. Because he was tall and fit, sports became the natural way for him to express his equality. At Polytechnic High School, Rotea became a star, before moving on to San Francisco State’s football team. Excelling on and off the field, Rotea received interest from the Chicago Cardinals, but a shoulder injury crushed any hope he had of succeeding in the National Football League.

He was forced to change his focus. In college, Rotea became friends with a young civil rights activist named Willie Brown. Also from Texas, Willie had experienced discrimination, even mob violence, firsthand, and he had moved to San Francisco when he was seventeen, determined to make a difference. Willie worked hard as a janitor to pay his way through college, and Rotea respected that. He also liked that Willie had an instinctive knack for knowing how to get things done.

After college, Rotea applied for jobs that had previously been held only by whites. He worked as a toll taker on the Bay Bridge, a Muni bus driver, and a cable car conductor, but those types of civil service jobs were only the first steps. His true calling was to become a police officer. After serving with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office for two years, Rotea excitedly made the move to the SFPD in 1960.

In his early days, he was known to people on his beat as “Mr. Smiley.” Rotea worked his home court, the Fillmore District, where he was already known and trusted. In what had once been known as the “Harlem of the West,” Rotea spent much of his time settling disputes in the Westside Courts housing projects and trying to help the children who lived there realize that a much bigger world existed outside of their sometimes impoverished existence.

A tireless storyteller, Rotea often exaggerated his exploits in the Fillmore for his fellow officers, who rarely believed him but always wanted to hear his stories. As the years went on, Rotea expanded and enlarged the stories until they became bigger than life.

By 1964 Rotea had broken ground in the SFPD by earning the title of inspector. Willie Brown was also making huge strides. He had just been elected to the California Assembly. Determined men both, Rotea and Willie would go on to earn further respect and break more new ground throughout their careers.

But only Rotea’s life would one day become inextricably intertwined with a serial killer’s.

23

Much had changed in San Francisco by the time Van was released from prison in 1965. The Beatles had sparked a British Invasion the previous year, altering the face of music, and the beatniks in North Beach had moved into the Haight, followed by another counterculture movement that was flowing in from around the country: young people rebelling en masse against the conservative ideas of their parents and an escalating war in Vietnam. In 1965, United States combat troops tripled in number as America fought against the spread of communism. Unlike many of their parents, whose patriotism ran deep after surviving World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, and the Korean War, this generation wanted peace, not war. They arrived by the thousands, chanting antiwar slogans in the middle of a drug-fueled lovefest. The older residents of the Haight watched helplessly as the beautiful old Victorians that had been spared from the fire of 1906 were divided into low-rent apartments that housed as many of these hippies as could be crammed into the space.

As he walked through the Haight, Van would have noticed that these young people who had invaded his old stomping grounds looked scraggly. Many of the girls had long, straight hair and wore flowing dresses, and the men were dressed in tattered jeans and multicolor T-shirts. All of them appeared to be stoned as they sang songs and talked about being brothers and loving everyone. At first, Van viewed the hippies with disdain. At least the beatniks had dressed well and tried to appear educated.

“What the hell is going on around here?” he asked Anton LaVey one afternoon. Van had arrived at LaVey’s California Street residence unannounced shortly after his release from prison. LaVey, who did not usually see visitors without an appointment, made an exception in this case. “And what have you done with this place?”

LaVey laughed. The house was undergoing a transformation similar to what LaVey was experiencing. As his philosophic explorations had expanded further into the dark side, the decor in the house had become more and more ritualistic. Skulls, writhing demons, and skeletons had been placed strategically in various rooms for maximum effect. But it was the organ in the main ritual chamber that drew Van’s attention.

Van stayed for only a few minutes, long enough to hear LaVey’s take on what was happening in the Haight and to learn that LaVey was writing a book, a bible of sorts. He couldn’t wait to tell William, but his old friend seemed disinterested when my father called. William had not yet gotten over Van’s refusal to testify for him.

Disgruntled by the brush-off, Van headed to the Avenue Theatre, hoping to find a job. LaVey had described the stage house and pipe organ there, and he wanted to see it. From the moment my father entered the theater, he was hooked.

Built in 1927, the theater’s marquee—avenue—announced to everyone that this was the place to be on San Bruno Avenue. A glass-enclosed ticket booth faced the street, where people stood in line to gain entrance to the darkened theater. On Tuesday and Wednesday nights, silent movies were featured, accompanied by a Wurlitzer playing in the background. Organist Robert Vaughn, known around San Francisco for the sweet sounds he could pull from the instrument, often accompanied the silent movies. While most people came to watch the films, Van attended to hear Vaughn play, hoping to one day get his turn on that beautiful instrument.

Van would eventually befriend Rick Marshall, the manager of the theater, a strange fellow who wore cheap clothes that were always too small. Like Van, Marshall was an avid reader and loved antiques, old films, and plays. Marshall enjoyed reciting Keats and Shakespeare. He also loved the theater’s ten-ton Wurlitzer, and after he heard Van play the massive organ, he sometimes let my father sit in when Vaughn was not available.

While music might have come back into Van’s life soon after he was released from prison, Judy had not, and Van was determined to rectify that situation. But Judy was not the same girl he had once known. Her impetuousness had caused her too much heartache, and she had learned her lessons. After nine months spent in a youth correctional facility, she had finally been returned to Verda’s custody. On February 3, 1964, at the age of sixteen, she enrolled in high school in San Francisco, and some sense of normalcy returned to her life. Verda and her husband divorced the following year, and Judy moved with her mother to Daly City, a suburb of San Francisco.

It was there that Van found her.

Having tracked down her mother’s number in a telephone listing, he called from a pay phone at a nearby shopping center.

“Hi, it’s me,” Van said when Judy answered the phone.

At the sound of his voice, my mother froze.

“Please come talk to me,” Van said. “I miss you. I’m sorry for what happened. I’ll get the baby back. I promise. I love you, Judy. Please. I’m right across the street.”

Judy collected her wits and took a deep breath. “I would not even cross a street to see you,” she said. “I never want to hear your voice again. And if I ever see you again, it would be too soon!”

“Judy, please. I love you.”

Judy hung up the phone, and for the first time in her life, she felt her own strength. A sense of power flowed through her. A fearlessness.

She was finally free.

Van was heartbroken. Livid. But there was nothing he could do. He returned to his bedroom on Noe Street to brood.

When he could stare at those walls no longer, my father immersed himself in his music and in the readily available psychotropic drugs being passed from person to person in Haight-Ashbury, escaping for a time from his pain.

By the middle of the decade, music in the San Francisco area was evolving as groups like the Warlocks (later the Grateful Dead) and Jefferson Airplane, whose signature psychedelic sound would embody the hippie movement, moved into Haight-Ashbury and honed their skills in local clubs, the same clubs where my father had honed his a decade before. Van listened with interest as the doo-wop sound of the fifties turned grittier, dirtier, and more instrument-oriented. Loud guitars replaced harmonies, and lyrics about sex and drugs gave teenagers permission. On the flip side, folk groups like the Mamas and the Papas and the Youngbloods would gain the same audience through lyrics about love and peace. Even John Lennon and Yoko Ono would visit the Haight, finding inspiration in the revolution against the establishment that was occurring there.

Older, and a conservative dresser, Van did not fit in with the kids in the Haight, but he was accepted in the music scene because of his talent. He soon resumed his business dealing in antiquities, in spite of having been convicted of fraud, and on his return trips he jammed with local musicians, including LaVey.

On April 30, 1966, Anton LaVey officially declared that the Age of Satan had started. Over the years, his audience had grown, and his Magic Circle had increased to include celebrities such as underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger. His followers from the Lost Weekend tavern formed much of the membership of LaVey’s new Church of Satan. The group now met in his house on California Street, which had been painted black and featured a main ritual chamber where church meetings were held. Ever the showman, LaVey regularly performed black magic for his enthralled congregation. In this room, LaVey’s teaching far surpassed the rebellion taking place against the government in the Haight.

On the streets, the rebellion was against traditional thinking. Against society’s rules.

In LaVey’s church, the rebellion was against God.

LaVey had transformed himself into an imposing figure, with his shaved head, clerical collar, black clothing, and the horns he sometimes wore for added effect. Van was impressed. LaVey had taken the philosophies they had been discussing for years and turned them into a sideshow that attracted people from all walks of life and outraged Christians across the country. My grandfather would have been horrified if he had known Van sometimes sat in that living room, listening with the others as LaVey’s booming voice rang out from behind the altar.

But there was much my grandfather didn’t know.

24

When Van met Edith Elsa Maria Kos, she reminded him of Judy, but she was older, twenty-six. Edith had grown up in Graz, a city in the state of Styria, Austria, without a father, and she had little experience with men. She had dedicated her life to helping others through her job as a social worker. Perhaps she saw something in my father that was broken and hoped she could fix it. Maybe she simply couldn’t resist when he turned on the charm. Or maybe it was because he could speak her language. Whatever the reason, Van quickly won her over, hoping that she could erase his memories of Judy.

On June 6, 1966—6/6/66—Van, paying homage to LaVey by choosing that date, married Edith in Year One of the Age of Satan.