Re: Warnke

(Barb, this is a portion of the review I mentioned to you in Netmail.)

From: romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu!drscience.PEN.TEK.COM!steves
To: witchhunt , drscience.PEN.TEK.COM!steves

The following book review is Most Interesting.  Self procalimed Satanic
priest is shown to be unturthful.  His stories discredited.  This review
appeared in the Jan/Feb 95 issue of Skeptical Inquirer.  Only part of the
review appears here.  To obtain the full issue write Skeptical Inquirer,
Box 703, Amherst, NY 14226-0703.

  ...

  Within this evangelical subculture, Mike Warnke was a media superstar.
  Undoubtedly, part of his appeal was the way in which he proved to people
  that if they dedicated themselves to Jesus then they could have a good
  live, no matter how terrible they might have once been.  As proof of
  this, Mike Warnke offered himself.  He confessed to having been not only
  a drug addict but also a high priest of a satanic cult that practiced
  human sacrifice and ritualistic rape and child abuse.  Warnke proudly
  stated that, through Jesus, he now had a blissful family life.

  Warnke's alleged conversion from high satanic priest to dedicated
  Christian entertainer made a fascinating story and attracted considerable
  attention.  Unlike Smith and Pazder's _Michelle_Remembers_, an earlier,
  influential, allegedly autobiographical, staunchly pro-Catholic,
  satanic-cult-hysteria book, _The_Satan_Seller_ appealed to the evangelical
  Protestant community.

  In time, Warnke became known in some circles as an authority on satanic
  cults, and he appeared in that role on "20-20," "The Oprah Winfrey Show,"
  "Larry King Live," "Focus on the Family," and "The 700 Club."  He was
  cited as an authority on Satanism and living proof of the existence of
  cults engaging in satanic ritual abuse in such works as Friesen's
  _Uncovering_the_Mystery_of_MPD [multiple personality disorder],
  Stratford's _Satan's_Underground_, and Ryder's _Breaking_the_Circle_
  _of_Satanic_Ritual_Abuse_.  These in turn were cited in other works.
  Although it would be an exaggeration to say that Mike Warnke was solely
  responsible for the current spate of satanic-cult paranoia, he undoubtedly
  had a great influence.  Few who have examined the arguments of believers
  in such cults can deny that many of them tend to have a worldwiew strongly
  grounded in Christian belief-systems and frequently a conservative
  fundamentalist orientation.

  Warnke's book consists of his telling stories about the key events in his
  life and how they convinced him of the importance of adopting a Christian
  lifestyle.  There were only two problems:  He was a pretty lame and
  mediocre comedian, and he was corrupt and untruthful.  In such a case,
  what is one to do?  The answer is simple--call in Jon Trott and Mike
  Hertenstein, a pair of born-again Christian investigative journalists.

  Hertenstein and Trott, working for _Cornerstone_ magazine, an evangelical
  publication, conducted a thorough investigation into Warnke's claims.
  In _Selling_Satan:_The_Tragic_History_of_Mike_Warnke_, they recount the
  investigation and the findings.  Trott and Hertenstein tracked down and
  interviewed more than one hundred of Warnke's acquaintances from
  throughout his life.  Among the discoveries was that Warnke's lies were
  not even very good ones.  For example, by his own admission, he had
  been involved in drugs in college.  He told how drug use led him on a
  self-destructive path culminating in involvement in the occult.  This in
  turn led him to Satanism, and ultimately to becoming high priest of the
  group.  Following the period of occult involvement, Warnke joined the
  Navy and served in Vietnam with the Marine Corp as a medical corpsman.
  While in the service he was converted and "saved" by two Christians who
  were sure that even Mike Warnke, former drug addict and satanic high
  priest, was not too far gone for Jesus' love to turn him around.

  The writers uncovered that Warnke had entered college, a secular junior
  college, September 13, 1965.   He entered the Navy on June 2, 1966.
  During his one semester prior to dropping out, there was hardly enough
  time for the many adventures Warnke claimed happened during his
  drug-addicted drug-dealer/Satanic-cultist-turned-high-priest period.
  These included being shot three times, riding a motorcycle to Mexico to
  make drug deals for a gangster, imprisoning sex slaves in his apartment,
  participating in CIA-funded LSD experiments at the college, and kidnapping
  a variety of victims for his cult's evil rituals and orchestrating the
  abduction of others.  He described walking around campus dressed in black
  with pasty white skin, innumerable scabs on his face, waist-length hair,
  and six-inch-long fingernails, painted black and sharpened for fighting.
  As ludicrous as this thrill-a-minute college semester sounds, it became
  even more absurd as Trott and Hertenstein began pinning down the dates
  even further, based on Warnke's descriptions of various diabolic
  ceremonies held under the light of a full moon.  The dates fell apart
  completely.

  Fellow students and college faculty found further problems with the story.
  It was, after all, set in the early sixties, not the late sixties.  There
  were no drugs at the junior college at the time, no CIA-funded LSD
  experiments, and no people with waist-length hair, much less the rest of the
  bizarre description Warnke provided.  This pattern of gross falsehood
  continued.  His period in Vietnam, described as a "year in Hell," was six
  months long, and most of his war stories had happened to other people or
  never occurred at all.  Other stories could not be corroborated.  For
  example, the two dedicated Christians who had "saved" Warnke had, he
  claimed, "died in Vietnam."  His blissful family life following the war
  consisted of a series of four marriages, each ending in divorce, with
  much womanizing on the side.  The donation plate passed around after each
  show supposedly went to a center for aiding satanic-cult-abuse victims.
  Neither the center nor the victims existed.  And as for his Christianity,
  Trott and Hertenstein uncovered that, in a completely unexpected episode
  of bizarreness, Warnke had secretly been ordained as an independent bishop
  in an obscure Eastern Orthodox sect, which he practiced on the side.
  ...

  I found _Selling_Satan_ fascinating.  It is more than the story of one
  individual; it also deals with his effect on others.  Warnke, evil as he
  is, is an intriguing character. ...

The book review was written by Peter Huston, a writer based in Schenectady,
New York.  His first book, _Shattered_Harmony_, a detailed study
of Chinese gangs, secret societies, and underground religious cults, will
be published by Paladin this year.  He is also working on a book-length
critique of the traditional arts and sciences of China.