“My grandmother has told me that she has, in a secret safety deposit box, the real identity ofthe Zodiac Killer [who committed a number of murders in northern California in the late ‘60s and was never caught] and that, during the murders, before, and after, he paid visits to the Black House. He wasn’t out and out with it; he didn’t come right out and say, ‘I’m the Zodiac Killer,’ but there was no mistaking him for anyone other than who he was.”
Stanton said the killings committed by the Zodiac Killer and Richard Ramirez alike were all part of a bigger, more significant scheme, “a much greater, beautiful, powerful, illuminating cause than our simple little minds here on Earth right now are able to understand.” Each Church member Stanton questioned about the night in the Embassy summed up the occasion in just a few brief sentences. Each summary was unique. “How they are able to cram an evening into a couple sentences explains a lot, leaves a lot of room for explanation that we are not going to get. But it’s safe to accept that a pact was made; a deal unlike any other deal with the devil took shape that night.”
Stanton leaned forward, his face a picture of sincerity. “I know there was only one topic and one topic only about which my grandfather ever contradicted himself in interviews and his own writings. There is only one subject that received at times positive, at other times negative, mixed conflicting opinions and sentiments from Anton LaVey. That one subject is Charlie Manson. There is a reason for that too. I’m going to fast forward thirty something years.”
Stanton was once a friend of Marilyn Manson’s. They were roommates for a time and at one point Stanton made a cameo appearance in one ofMarilyn’s music videos. Marilyn is a member ofthe Church ofSatan and was ordained by Anton LaVey. Stanton recalled the nature of their friendship: “So, I’m living in Marilyn Manson’s house doing something along the lines of a mountain of cocaine a day and washing it down with never ending wells of absinthe. I had been groomed for this too after ten years living
in Hollywood, partying with the best of the worst.” Around this time, Stanton invited his friend, musician Hank Williams III, over to Marilyn’s house so the two could meet. As the two got acquainted, Marilyn played a tape he’d never shared with Stanton before: the initial police questioning of Roman Polanski, in Europe, upon his learning of the murder of his wife and unborn child.
Of the Church of Satan’s deal with the devil, Stanton told me, “Something had to be done; a sacrifice had to be made, and not just any.” Stanton described in detail his impressions of the Polanski tape. Polanski was in France, and the recording features a French interpreter translating questions asked by a French inspector. That night, Marilyn rewound the tape and played it over and over again. Stanton says he listened to the recording over one hundred times.
At that point, Stanton began researching the financing of Polanski’s films and the people involved who might have been involved in other things. There is J. Paul Getty Jr., who financed all of Kenneth Anger’s films over his entire career and also coproduced Rosemary’s Baby. Stanton insinuated that Polanski has a clear interest in the occult based on the movies his made. Stanton discussed the urban legend surrounding Anton LaVey’s alleged portrayal of the devil in Rosemary’s Baby, during the scene in which Satan rapes Rosemary. He said the stunt double that played the devil received no credit for the film, although witnesses remember Anton being there. “Anton LaVey is someone like myself: if you are in the same room with one of us, you are going to notice you are in the same room with an uncanny, strange character, who isn’t just a stunt double putting
on a mask.” That Rosemary’s Baby was made at all is significant to Stanton. “It doesn’t really matter how much of it was carefully planned and orchestrated and executed perfectly. It’s neither here nor there; fact is fact.”
The fact for Stanton is that, essentially, the entire Manson Family is an offshoot from the Church of Satan. He said that Susan Atkins ended her association with the Church when she became a member ofthe Manson Family. This happened the same night Bobby Beausoleil renounced his roles as Kenneth Anger’s understudy and apprentice and became, instead, Charlie’s “star” family member. All of this, Stanton told me, was preplanned. Evidence to the higher order behind the murders of August 1969 is the fact that “Bobby effectively martyred himself.” Stanton said no one has heard a complaint from Bobby since the beginning of his incarceration. He insisted it’s highly unlikely that a man who’s spent the last forty years in jail for a murder resulting from “one drug deal gone wrong” would keep so solemnly silent for so long. “Bobby Beausoleil is not in prison as a consequence or penalty; he’s in prison as a form of protection. The same goes for Charlie.” Stanton told me he was hesitant to ask Charlie about the real terms of his imprisonment. “It’s like asking the president, ‘Why isn’t the Constitution abided by?’“
Stanton stopped speaking for a moment and seemed to reflect before he said, “Talking about this stuff and laying it out there like this has me feeling weird, dude, and it takes a lot to make me feel weird. I’ve never told this story this way ever.” The feeling in the room as Stanton spoke was intense. Though I was aware that what Stanton was sharing was very personal and self defining, we both seemed to understand that his story was something
that needed to be shared. Up to this point, Stanton’s voice had been calm and controlled. I had a sense he was surprised at the smoothness of his delivery and how the facts had flowed from him exactly, it seemed, as necessary. We sat together in silence for well over a minute, a small moment in time that seemed more like an eternity contained within an eternity.
He smiled, a sort ofmischievous grin, and continued: “My grandfather lit a torch one fateful night in 1967 and handed it to Charlie Manson. Now and forever, Charlie is that torchbearer, so how much of this story will find illumination is yet to be determined. Solely by Man-son, Uncle Chuck. By the way, I love you, Charlie. I don’t care what my grandfather said about you; he was just jealous because he couldn’t get up in the action, get his hands dirty. Well, from my family to yours, love always.”
It had been a very long day and it was late. During our conversation, Sharon had been busy cooking, making spaghetti and meatballs. As she handed me a plate full of food, Stanton said, “It’s human flesh, you know.” The remark caught me off guard; it seemed more sinister than joking because, well, with Stanton, you never know. Stanton enjoyed a good laugh at my expense. “Here’s a bit of trivia you’ll love,” he said. “The plate you are eating off of is from the Church of Satan. My grandfather used it thousands of times.”
As we ate, Stanton talked more about Charles Manson, the man. He told me he believes Charlie is the voice of reason, the quintessential protagonist of the “I’m not crazy; you’re all crazy” kind of story. Stanton remarked on the Charles Manson that
made appearances on late night true crime television shows. “All his wild, crazy, dancing jive, his faces and reflections-yeah that’s how fuckin’ crazy all of you crazy fools drive us. I know all these fools, these mortals; they drive me ape shit crazy too, and I find myself making every crazy face imaginable, and spinning around in circles, jumping around, and banging my hands on the ground like a man who has gone completely mad, with good reason; you are all diving us crazy.” Stanton said he felt confident enough about this idea to speak on behalf of Manson. “Any crazy ways he may have acted are only and solely due to how motherfucking crazy these goddamn motherfucks on Earth drive us, for how blindingly stupid, useless, annoying, and destructive they all are.”
Stanton told me that Earth’s biggest problem is its human population, that if this one problem were eliminated, all its other problems would cease to exist. “Problem is a word that should not be allowed to have an s on the end of it, because there is only one problem and that is humanity.” While Stanton says he didn’t quite learn this lesson from Charles Manson, it was Manson who instilled the spark in Stanton’s passion for his preexisting beliefs about people. “He definitely fuckin’ reminded me at a time when I needed that extra little push, that little bit of guidance, that spark, that fire, yes, that fuel. Charlie knows all; he’s the closest we have, our own messiah. I only speak the truth. I don’t need to lie because I’m open and I receive plenty, but there’s frightening fucking truths at the end of the road. So many of these things would be disturbing to me if I didn’t have the comfort ofknowing it’s all over anyways.”
Stanton assured me that if people would just open their ears and close their mouths, they would not be able to escape the
essence of the satanic philosophy espoused by Charlie. “There is a reason for the Satanic Bible, a reason for ATWA. My grandfather had a message not at all dissimilar from Charlie’s, not at all. All it takes is just a little bit of patience, and when you open your ears and close your mouth, you will not be able to escape the essential, the essence of the satanic philosophy side by side with Charlie.”
Stanton recited for me the Nine Satanic Statements of the Satanic Bible:
1. Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence!
2. Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams!
3. Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self-deceit!
4. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates!
5. Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek!
6. Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires!
7. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all!
8. Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!
9. Satan has been the best friend the Church has ever had, as He has kept it in business all these years!
Stanton continued to explain the teachings of Satanism. He condemned rules and laws and stressed the importance of self preservation and survival of the fittest. He told me might is right, that you either live or die, that you are either predator or prey “People don’t like accepting or admitting stuff like that,” he said. “It’s fucking horrifying.” Stanton shifted his focus, “You see, Marlin, what you are writing, what you are embarking on here, makes you the Mother Goose of the future. A thousand years from now, you will be remembered as Mother Goose, instead of someone recording history as it happened.” Stanton said life is a series of cycles, through which fact and fiction become so intertwined in so distant a memory that it can be impossible to distinguish one from the other down the line. But the subject of our discussion, he said, is something other than fact or fiction; it exists above both, a concept that has yet to be explored and understood. “You may grow a greater understanding and awareness of it than most people,” Stanton said. “It may prove to drive you mad or it may also be your saving grace. For me, that’s where I’ve been this whole time.”
Stanton continued: “I fully support and back up Charlie one hundred percent, until the end. Nothing will sway me. I love Charlie. I don’t need to love Anton LaVey because I am Anton LaVey, and I love myself plenty. I have come to learn this with the use of a lot of LSD and self introspection because, you know, you can only go so far. You know very well because in your career you are dealing with people who went in, got lost, and couldn’t find their way around, and that’s coming from someone who was diagnosed as schizophrenic by nine out of eleven Viennese doctors. Remember: any crazy I am, you made me that way.”
In the midst of this trip of self-discovery, Stanton came to believe in the Hollywood machine, “the latest sort of slime ball religion nouveau of celebrity faith that exists with Tom Cruise as saint and Ron Hubbard as modern messiah, both keepers of a powerful awakening in the human subconscious mind.” Understanding Hollywood, according to Stanton, is the closest humanity has come to understanding how reality actually works. “So we have Earth,” he explained, “and then we have Hollywood, the miniature version of Earth.”
Listening to Stanton talk about Hollywood, I was reminded of a conversation I’d had with Charlie, during which he’d told me essentially the same things: “I am Hollywood; that’s my town, man. That’s my garbage dump. Hollywood is actually a really holy place, man. Look at all the images and the body that Hollywood has created around the world. It’s spiritual-look at all the dreams. Look at all the soldiers, look at all the wars, look at all the dying. You can see a thousand million people die in Hollywood, man. You can kill people on the altar of a sacrificial pyramid for five hundred years-still couldn’t beat Hollywood. They do that in a weekend.
Stanton moved on from the topic of Hollywood to a discussion of Satanism as a means for human beings to overcome their destructive nature. He explained that the human animal lives to torture itself, lives a masochistic existence from beginning to end. According to Stanton, the human species is programmed to be a self denying, selfloathing, self punishing, pain-seeking lot. “I have to remind myself everyday not to work or pay bills, but to jack off, smoke a joint, slap someone when they’re not expecting it, and laugh ‘cause it’s funny.”
We talked about Stanton’s ten years in Hollywood: the parties, the debauchery, and the crazy number of celebrities he’d met. “I’ve only been star struck once: when I met Pee-wee Herman. I was twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old and I was shaking like a little girl.” Stanton believes Pee-wee’s Big Adventure is and will always be the greatest movie of all time. Because, he explained, it tells all of our stories, the stories of our collective pain, stress, frustration, humor, absurdity, bewilderment, confusion, and craziness. Yet, somewhere amidst all the chaos, there is order. “Just look at Pee-wee himself. Never is there a wrinkle in his suit or a smudge in his perfect makeup but, yet, he embodies chaos.” Stanton said Pee-wee’s Big Adventure embodies its own philosophy. “It sure has shown me a whole lot more about the human condition-what to be prepared for, what to expect out of people and situations-than any book. I’m saying that I have personally gotten more out of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure than even the Satanic Bible.” Stanton asked me, “Have you ever been star struck?” And I told him, “Sure, when I met Alice Cooper for the first time.” Stanton thought about this and said, “I could see that, he’s sort of the Pee-wee Herman of your generation.”