The Evil Satanic Cult (Supposedly) Behind Cattle Mutilations

July 15, 2020July 15, 2020 / Tristan / 2 Comments

Artist’s rendition of a flying saucer’s abduction of a young cow.

When five cattle were found mysteriously dead on a Oregon ranch last summer, the authorities found themselves baffled. The animals, prowling around in a remote part of country, had been mutilated and drained of blood. Body parts like tongues and genitals were completely removed. A sheriff’s deputy, Dan Jenkins, dismissed the usual suspects of wolves and other natural predators. None of the cattle were shot, ruling out human intervention.

In an interview with NPR, Jenkins noted that a lot of locals blamed the butchery on aliens: “One caller had told us to look for basically a depression under the carcass. ‘Cause he said that the alien ships will kinda beam the cow up and do whatever they are going to do with it. Then they just drop them from a great height.” Whether the extraterrestrials drop cows from great heights out of a sense of sadism, scientific curiosity, or just altruism, is uncertain. The strange episode is certainly reminiscent of a wave of cattle mutilations in the Midwestern and Western United States during the 1970s.

During this time, there was a flood of reports about cattle and other livestock being killed and mutilated on small farms. An October 1975 article on the subject in The New York Times opened with the question, “Who has been killing cattle in Colorado and at least 10 other states the last few months?” Scientists and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation attributed most of the deaths to natural causes. There were essentially three, however, more colorful theories that overlooked blowflies, bears, and coyotes.

Some pinned the blame on aliens, an idea that has remained popular to this day. Others suggested secret government experiments, because clearly leaving horrifically maimed cow carcasses in the wild wouldn’t draw anyone’s suspicions. A third school of thought, begging for a “grounded” solution, pointed to a Satanic cult. The humble theoretician behind this postulation was Albert Kenneth Bankston, an authority on bank robbing who was serving time for his field in a Kansas federal penitentiary. In 1974, Bankston began writing letters to Ross Doyen, a state senator interested in the mutilations.

According to Bankston, the culprits leaving behind thousands of dead, mutilated livestock were the members of a dark cult called the Sons of Satan. The cultists drained the cattle’s blood via hypodermic needles, and cut off their genitals to use in fertility rituals. In addition to their cattle mutilating, the cult kept themselves busy with drug-dealing, murder, and other unsavory hobbies. Doyen, bewildered and enlightened, passed the information off to paranormal researcher Jerome Clark, who also started up a correspondence with Bankston.

The bits and pieces from Bankston painted the image of a wealthy, ambitious cult that wasn’t content with just terrorizing farm animals. Bankston claimed that the Satanists were made up of bikers, criminals, and millionaire stockbrokers, and their plans included stealing a nuclear missile and assassinating journalists and politicians. In an age when a crazed folk singer and his followers attempted to set off a race war only five or six years earlier, Bankston’s story was treated seriously by the authorities. Donald Flickinger, an investigator from the U.S. Treasury Department, was tasked with checking into the former bank robber’s allegations.

Aided in testimony by his pal Dan Dugan, a gentleman reposing in a Texan prison, Bankston happily squealed in exchange for being moved to a small town jail. Together, Bankston and Dugan regaled Flickinger with detail after detail about the Satanists. The members of the cult were not only involved in animal abuse, but human sacrifice as well. They drugged and pacified their victims with PCP, walking around with cardboard on their feet so they wouldn’t leave footprints. When they were finished, the cultists escaped on helicopters, ensuring that they wouldn’t leave a trace at the scene. (And that the mutilations could be blamed on UFOs).

Their revelations were elaborate, but neither Bankston nor his friend had any evidence to prove they were based in reality. Dugan reported that he was once part of the cult, and had been controlled with drugs. He said that he watched the group kill four teenagers in 1969, dumping their bodies at Lake Cozad in Nebraska. After digging up the spot, however, the authorities couldn’t even find a piece of cardboard. It was obvious that nobody had been killed at the spot, and increasingly evident that Bankston and Dugan were just making things up and passing around rumors.

Albert Kenneth Bankston also kept on insisting to be transferred to smaller prisons. He insisted that the cult wanted to silence him for knowing too much, but Bankston’s real motivation was to get into a less secure location. After being transferred several times, Bankston decided to ditch the slammer and escape. He was caught only a few hours later, while Dugan’s own attempt in Texas wasn’t much successful either. Much to the government’s annoyance, the Bankston connection was a complete hoax.

Based on a study of cattle mutilations in New Mexico, FBI agent Kenneth Rommel argued in a 1980 report that the hysteria was overblown, and that the attackers were natural predators. This ended government interest in the phenomenon, although some farmers and local law officers continued to insist that something strange was afoot. The public belief in the Satanic cult theory died down as well, with pop culture associating the mutilations with little green men instead. It seems, going into the 1980s, the Satanists shifted gears, spending their time hanging out at daycares, kidnapping children, and killing giraffes.

If you enjoyed reading this article, please consider supporting my work by buying my book “Forgotten Lives” on Amazon here. The book has been found mutilated in no less than forty states, and the morbid and bizarre stories therein star such characters as a playwright who stages real deaths for his work, a corpse that leads a revolution in a banana republic, and a sleazy photographer who claims to take pictures of ghosts. If your tastes lean toward the absurd, do give the book a read and leave a review, death-threat, or prophetic message on its Amazon page.

5 Theories about the Death of Bruce Lee

September 16, 2019September 15, 2019 / Tristan / Leave a comment

BruceLee

On May 20, 1973, legendary actor and martial artist Bruce Lee told his friend (and mistress) Betty Ting that he had a headache. Lee took some Equagesic, a kind of painkiller, and then decided to take a nap. When Ting later fetched Lee for dinner, she found the superstar unresponsive. After Lee’s producer and doctor arrived, nobody could manage to wake Lee up, and he was promptly rushed to the hospital.

Unfortunately, it was already too late. Bruce Lee, at the mere age of 32, was dead. While the doctors ruled his case “death by misadventure,” it was believed that Lee had an allergic reaction to the painkiller he took, causing cerebral edema. Naturally, fans were devastated. How could a guy as fit and extraordinary as Bruce Lee die so unexpectedly? No less from an allergic reaction? Surely something happened behind the scenes.

Personally, I’m inclined to believe the official diagnosis. Like the cases of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, some people just refuse to believe that such beautiful and amazing icons could die as plainly and tragically as the rest of us. Since Lee’s sudden death 46 years ago, a number of theories have popped up questioning the conventional narrative, many of them ridiculous. As a big Lee fan and skeptic, I’ve compiled a list of five of the bigger theories surrounding his death, clearing up and debunking the claims of the most outlandish and sensational.

1. Bad Feng Shui

According to the ancient Chinese idea of feng shui, a life force called qi flows all around us. To maximize that energy, and bring good fortune to yourself, you need to organize your house, furniture, and Bruce Lee DVDs in a way that won’t block qi. Depending on where you situate your stuff, the place of an object can affect everything from your health to financial status.

When Bruce Lee moved to a house in Hong Kong’s Kowloon Tong district, it was said that the building suffered from bad feng shui. According to Lee biographer Bruce Thomas, the house’s two previous owners had financial issues, and the building “faced the wrong way,” and had disturbed natural winds. To fix this problem, a feng shui adviser ordered a mirror to be put on the roof. This was supposed to deflect the bad energy, but the mirror was knocked off during a typhoon.

Ominously, Lee died just two days after the charm was blown away. While some of Lee’s neighbors apparently linked the two events at the time, the problem with this theory is that feng shui is nothing but a superstition. There’s no scientific evidence for any of its tenets, including qi. At most, feng shui could be regarded as a kind of art. Lee’s death after the loss of his mirror is a simple coincidence. Moreover, Lee died in Betty Ting’s apartment, not in his own house.

2. Murder

The abruptness of Bruce Lee’s death, combined with his extraordinary fitness, made some fans wonder whether something more sinister was at work. People who believe that Lee was murdered have put forward a line-up of suspects. One popular suggestion is that he was poisoned. James DeMile, an American martial artist who’d trained with Lee, argued that his old teacher was poisoned by enemies in the Hong Kong movie industry.

Proponents of this theory sometimes point to producer Raymond Chow as the mastermind behind Lee’s “murder.” Golden Harvest, a studio Chow helped to establish, made most of Lee’s kung-fu movies. (Enter the Dragon was a co-production between Warner Bros and Concord Production Inc., the latter a company founded by Bruce Lee and Raymond Chow). Since Lee had ambitions to become a Hollywood star, the story goes that Chow had him killed so he wouldn’t lose such a valuable cash cow.

In actuality, Chow had nothing to do with a murder plot, but his exploitative behavior probably went a long way toward promoting this theory. After Lee’s death, Chow tastelessly finished the actor’s last work Game of Death, using a body double and including real footage of Lee’s funeral in the movie.

3. The Gangster Connection

Another variation on the murder hypothesis involves Chinese gangs known as triads. In addition to drug trafficking, counterfeiting, and controlling prostitution rings, triads have also had an influence in the Hong Kong movie industry. In some cases, movie studios even hired gangsters to intimidate popular actors into accepting lower pay for their work.

There isn’t any strong evidence that Lee was connected with triads, but they’ve made their way into his lore anyway. It’s generally understood that when Lee moved as a teen to the United States, it was because his parents were afraid that their son was getting into too much trouble at home. This decision was instigated by Lee’s fight with a boy from a powerful family, but more colorful accounts claim that the other boy had a criminal background.

According to this gangster-related theory, the triads never forgave Lee. Another alternative suggests that they killed Lee for refusing to join them, or because he couldn’t be threatened into giving protection money or taking a pay-cut. Other alterations emphasize Lee’s mistress Betty Ting, accusing her of being linked to triads. The fact that Ting would later marry Charles Heung, an actor from a triad family, is seen as further proof. Heung, however, has long tried to distance himself from the criminal underworld, and it’s frankly silly to think that Ting would have a motive in hurting Lee.

4. Heat Stroke

As far as the entries on this list go, the heat stroke theory is the only grounded and probable one. In 2018, author Matthew Polly advanced the idea in his biography Bruce Lee: A Life. Lee was sensitive to heat, and an operation he had that removed his armpit sweat glands probably made his condition worse. The day that Lee died, in fact, was extremely hot.

While he was hanging out with Betty Ting in her roasting apartment, Lee reenacted the fight scenes from his latest project, Game of Death. After he was done, Lee complained that he was tired and had a headache, both of which are symptoms of a heat stroke. Ten weeks earlier, Lee had fainted while working out in a hot room, so it’s possible that he had a second, fatal attack the day of his death.

Another medical explanation for Lee’s demise comes from James Filkins, an American doctor. In 2006, Dr. Filkins proposed that Lee fell victim to an attack of SUDEP (sudden unexpected death in epilepsy). The condition typically affects young men, and appears entirely unprovoked. If this really were the cause of Lee’s death, doctors at the time wouldn’t have recognized it, since SUDEP wasn’t defined until 1995.

5. The Lee Family Curse

It seemed certain that Brandon Lee, Bruce’s one and only son, was on track to follow in his father’s footsteps. He was not only a martial artist, but also an actor, most notably starring in the classic 1994 movie The Crow. Oddly, like his father, Brandon would die tragically and young. On March 31, 1993, while wrapping up filming on The Crow, Brandon was accidentally shot and killed by a prop gun.

Given the circumstances, it wasn’t long before more superstitious fans began to argue that the Lee family was cursed. Brandon’s death paralleled a scene in the completed version of Game of Death, in which Lee’s character Billy Lo fakes his death by getting shot on a movie set. As another piece of evidence, believers point out that Bruce’s oldest brother passed away at the age of three months. According to this reasoning, only the male side of the Lee family is affected, which is why Bruce’s daughter Shannon Lee is still alive and well.

What proponents of the curse miss (or choose to ignore) is that Bruce and Brandon weren’t the only men of the family. Bruce’s father Lee Hoi-chuen, also an actor, died from a heart attack at the age of 64. His oldest son Peter, who also suffered a heart attack, died at the age of 68. The youngest of the Lee sons, Robert, is still alive at 70-years-old. While it’s a strange coincidence that Brandon and Bruce would have such tragic ends, it’s an exaggeration to declare the Lee family “cursed.” Unfortunately, the real matter is that people as talented as Brandon and Bruce Lee are just as mortal and likely to die as the rest of us.

If you enjoyed reading this article, please consider supporting my work by pre-ordering my book “Forgotten Lives” on Amazon here. My first collection of short stories includes the company of such wonderful people as a vengeful circus dwarf, a gourmet cannibal, and a mother who convinces her daughter that aliens are coming to abduct them. If you’re up for something strange and morbid, be sure to check the book out when it hits Kindle on September 23.

ForgottenLivesCover

Invasion of the Russian Robotoids

April 30, 2018April 30, 2018 / Tristan / Leave a comment

Forget the Body Snatchers- the Russian Robotoids are here!

Between June 1975 and November 1982, conspiracy theorist Peter Beter released a series of cassette tapes that he called “audio letters.” In these tapes, the former lawyer and financier claimed that the world was being fought over by three shadowy factions:the Rockefeller family, the Russians, and a Bolshevik-Zionist alliance. According to Beter lore, the Russian government was controlled by a group of virtuous Christians, while the Rockefellers and Bolshevik-Zionists were nefarious evil-doers attempting to take control of the world. By the time Beter concluded his letters, the Bolshevik-Zionists had infiltrated the American government, with the Rockefellers and Russians teaming up to stop them.

It’s a needlessly complicated story, and so utterly outlandish that it borders on unintentional comedy. Of course, theories involving antisemitism, globalist bankers, and Russians are a dime-a-dozen among conspiracy theorists, but Beter makes things stupider by throwing in doppelganger robots. These “organic robotoids,” as Beter called them, were apparently indispensable in the Bolshevik-Rockefeller-Russian War.

The origins of the organic robotoids stretch back to 1975, when Russian scientists succeeded in creating the first model of the machine in secret. Organic robotoids are made from a person’s body cells, and are meant to work as body doubles. While manufactured and programmed like computers, robotoids are doomed to eat, bleed and die like conventional meatbags. They can’t reproduce, however, and their shelf-life lasts only a couple of weeks or months at the most. Fortunately, a robotoid can be made in a matter of hours, ensuring a steady supply of doppelgangers indistinguishable from their source.

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The Strange Death of Wilma Montesi

June 23, 2016June 23, 2016 / Tristan / 3 Comments

(No, I haven’t become the victim of an unsolved murder. I’ve been busy lately and haven’t had much time to write any new posts. If you’re getting very desperate (and impatient) for your Bizarre and Grotesque fix, you can always check out my two latest books: “Mexico’s Unsolved Mysteries” and “20 Unsolved Mysteries of Japan.” In case you prefer freer things, however, here’s my sole post for June.)

Wilma Montesi was a 20-year-old Italian woman who was found dead on a beach near Rome under mysterious circumstances.

On April 11, 1953, a laborer having breakfast on Italy’s Torvaianica Beach found the body of a young woman lying lifeless on the shore. The body was identified as that of Wilma Montesi, a 20-year-old Roman woman who was last seen on April 9. Wilma’s clothes were soaked. She was also missing her shoes, garter belt, and stockings. Theories ranged from Wilma accidentally drowning to taking her own life.

The evening Wilma disappeared, her mother and sister Wanda had gone to see a movie. Wilma was invited to come along, but said she would probably go for a walk instead. Despite leaving behind a precious piece of jewelry that she always wore, Wilma never returned home that night. Witnesses claimed to see her riding a train from Rome to Ostia, while a man who sold postcards reported talking to a woman who looked like Wilma near a beach in Ostia. Wilma was engaged to be married soon, and the salesman said the woman bought a postcard for her boyfriend.

As the authorities pieced things together, it seemed that Wilma’s death was an accident. Wilma sometimes suffered from a pain in her heels, which she would try to ease by dipping her feet in water. While in the water, Wilma must have fallen unconscious and then drowned. Her body was carried by the currents to the beach in Torvaiancia, where she was eventually found by the laborer. The contents of her stomach showed nothing unusual in her body, and there were no signs indicating she had been the victim of violence either.

A picture of Wilma Montesi’s body. She was found lying in this position.

The police were satisfied with the accident theory, but the press insisted there was something more to the story. An article in the paper Roma, published in the May 4th edition, theorized that Wilma was murdered and the true cause of her death was being covered up. The next day, another newspaper article claimed that a man had turned Wilma’s missing clothes into the police. This unidentified man was eventually revealed to the public as Piero Piccioni, a jazz musician and son of Attilio Piccioni, the foreign minister and a big shot in the country’s Christian Democrats party.

Needless to say, Piero Piccioni was outraged by the accusation. He sued Marco Sforza, the journalist who leaked to the public that Piccioni was the unidentified man. Sforza agreed to take back the accusation, and the whole scandal eventually died down and was forgotten over the summer.

This was not, however, the end of the story. On October 6, 1953, a reporter named Silvano Muto revived interest in the case when he published an article that alleged Wilma Montesi had lived a secret double life. According to an actress named Andriana Concetta Bisaccia, Wilma took part in a wild drug-filled orgy with members of the Roman elite. When Wilma overdosed on some drugs, the party-goers dumped her body onto the beach in Torvaianica. The authorities came up with the accident theory to protect the orgy participants, one of whom was said to be Piero Piccioni.

Piero Piccioni, a man accused of being involved in Wilma Montesi’s death.

Like Marco Sforza before him, Muto was sued and eventually retracted his accusations. His source, the actress who attended the orgy with Wilma, denied everything in the article. Another actress, however, soon came forward and confirmed what Bisaccia said. Maria Augusta Moneta Caglio Bessier d’Istria reported that Wilma was an old mistress of Ugo Montagna, the man suing Sforza and the owner of the place where the orgy was alleged to have taken place. Maria wrote up a memorandum that confirmed the findings in Muto’s article, and this document was then given to an Italian official who suspended the trial against Muto.

On March 26, 1954, the investigation of Wilma’s death was re-opened. The Christian Democrats claimed the scandal was nothing but a conspiracy orchestrated by their political enemies, but the ensuing controversy eventually led to Attilio Piccioni’s resignation from his post. Piero Piccioni and Ugo Montagna were then arrested, and a Roman superintendent of the police was also taken into custody for his involvement in the cover-up. Piccioni went to trial for manslaughter and drug use, while Montagna was accused of helping him get rid of Wilma’s body.

While the press might have been calling for Piero Piccioni’s blood, the Montesis thought the man was innocent. They maintained that their daughter was a good middle-class girl, the last person in the world to be involved with drugs and casual sex. There was a side to Wilma, however, that her family didn’t want known to the public. She liked to smoke cigarettes and stay out late, behavior considered shocking for a young woman of the time. She also frequently fought with her mother, sometimes violently. As the case went on, the theory of Wilma dying from a drug overdose at an aristocratic orgy was not as far-fetched as it first seemed.

On May 28, 1957, Piero Piccioni and Ugo Montagna were deemed innocent of their charges and acquitted. Montagna denied having ever known Wilma Montesi, while Alida Valli, a popular movie star, provided Piccioni with an alibi during the time of Wilma’s death. As far as the authorities were concerned, the accidental drowning theory was still correct. Yet what about the testimony of Bisaccia and Bessier d’Istria? Was there truly a cover-up that extended all the way to a leader of the Christian Democrats? Was Wilma Montesi really as clean as her family claimed she was? Perhaps the circumstances surrounding the young woman’s death will never properly be explained.

Did CIA Agents Kill Hollywood Screenwriter Gary DeVore?

May 26, 2016May 26, 2016 / Tristan / 2 Comments

Picture of Gary DeVore and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In the early hours of June 28, 1997, Gary DeVore, a Hollywood screenwriter best-remembered for penning the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie “Raw Deal,” disappeared while driving home from his friend’s house in Santa Fe, New Mexico. At the time of his disappearance, DeVore was working on a remake of the 1949 movie “The Big Steal,” a film noir about the hunt for a thief who deliberately disappeared in Mexico. DeVore wasn’t aiming for a modernized update, but a complete overhaul involving the American invasion of Panama in 1989.

Officially, the American government’s justifications for the invasion was to protect American citizens, defend Panama’s democratic system from dictator Manuel Noriega,and crackdown on the country’s drug trafficking. The invasion lasted little more than a month, and Noriega was ultimately deposed and then convicted for drug trafficking and money laundering charges in the U.S.

While conducting research for his script, however, DeVore became convinced that there were more ulterior reasons for the invasion. According to one researcher, as reported by The Daily Mail, “… the film may have implied the invasion was nothing more than a diversion that would allow the US into Panama to steal back incriminating photos of senior US officials that Noriega could have used as blackmail.”

Mugshot of Panamanian General Manuel Noriega.

The embarrassing pictures the government was so anxious to retrieve were allegedly taken during wild booze and drug-filled sex parties organized by Noriega. These parties were said to have gone on for years, and were attended by CIA agents and Congress representatives. Noriega’s purpose in organizing the parties was to secretly film American officials and create sex tapes that could be used to blackmail them. (Note: This rumor about Noriega’s secret sex tapes first surfaced in the short-lived “Sunday Correspondent,” in an article that was published two months before the U.S. invaded Panama.)

The night he disappeared, DeVore last talked to his wife on the phone around 1:15 AM, as he was driving to their home in Santa Barbara, California. Wendy tried calling her husband three times earlier, but his phone only rang and went unanswered. When DeVore called Wendy back 15 minutes later, he acted strangely and told his wife not to wait for him to come home. Despite being three or so hours away, near the town of Barstow, DeVore never made it home. The authorities searched all over his route, yet the screenwriter never materialized.

Worried by his behavior on the phone, Wendy was afraid that DeVore had been abducted. She strongly felt that somebody else was in the car when she talked to him at 1:15. DeVore’s publicist, on the other hand, thought that he left for Panama with the help of a CIA friend. Others suspected that DeVore committed suicide due to financial problems and dissatisfaction with his career. Over the next year, Wendy would organize many more searches and even put out a $100,000 reward to locate her husband, but it was eventually an amateur detective named Douglas Crawford who would find DeVore’s remains.

Crawford had nothing to do with Wendy DeVore or the investigation, but he believed Gary DeVore probably fell asleep at the wheel, drove off the road, and drowned in the California Aqueduct. Amazingly, Crawford’s theory was right, and DeVore’s Ford Explorer turned up submerged in the canal. His decomposed body was found in the driver’s seat, secured with the seat belt. The laptop DeVore had carried the night he drove off the road was never recovered. It contained the latest draft of “The Big Steal,” which he had worked on while in New Mexico. His gun, which he kept in his car, was also missing. DeVore’s autopsy came back inconclusive, but the authorities were convinced that Crawford’s accident theory was correct. Other people, like DeVore’s widow, suspected foul play or CIA involvement.

DeVore’s car being recovered from the California Aqueduct.

In recent years, thanks to the release of a 2014 documentary entitled “The Writer with No Hands,” public interest in DeVore’s bizarre death has resurfaced. The movie’s title is a reference to the claim that DeVore was missing his hands when he was found, a detail not mentioned in any of the newspaper articles I read from the time when DeVore’s body was discovered. According to The Daily Mail article I quoted earlier, the coroner who looked over DeVore concluded that the hands he was found with weren’t actually his. In fact, they were estimated to be over 200 years old!

With this weird little tidbit in mind, conspiracy theorists have argued that DeVore was murdered by the CIA because his new movie was going to leak a bunch of classified information about the Panama invasion. Letting Hollywood shoot the movie, so the story goes, would have been a threat to national security. Before his death, DeVore was allegedly very close with some members of the CIA, and regularly received phone calls from them. He even allegedly traveled to Panama with CIA agents.

This is all very juicy stuff, but none of these last few details have ever been covered or verified by a reputable mainstream source. The CIA does, in fact, have some connections with Hollywood. Since 1996, the agency’s “entertainment industry liaison” officers have worked to help and influence the movie industry. This influence might be limited to fact-checking or encouraging movie-makers to portray the CIA in a positive light, although some believe the agency’s scope goes far beyond just these activities. Interestingly, DeVore’s CIA friend, Chase Brandon, was an entertainment industry liaison officer.

As it stands, Gary DeVore’s death remains solved, and his CIA relationship flimsy. Currently, the police files that deal with his death are classified and unavailable even to Wendy DeVore. Perhaps, should they ever be released, the many rumors surrounding DeVore’s death will end up confirmed or debunked. For the time being, anybody interested in pursuing the conspiracy angle should check out “The Writer with No Hands” or its accompanying book.

The Mysterious Suicide of French Politician Robert Boulin

August 16, 2015August 17, 2015 / Tristan / Leave a comment

Robert Boulin.

On October 30, 1979, the body of Robert Boulin was found in a pond in the forest of Rambouillet in southern France. Boulin, a Gaullist politician and veteran of the French Resistance during World War II, had not been seen since the day before, when he had gone out to lunch with his son. His car and an empty container of barbiturates were found near his body. Inside the car were some letters declaring his intention to kill himself.

A note he wrote to police, dated the day of his death, was received a few days later. Boulin wrote, “I have decided to drown myself in a lake in the forest of Rambouillet, where I enjoyed horse-riding.”

The autumn of that year, Boulin was embroiled in a real-estate scandal in which he illegally acquired five acres of land in the Rambouillet area. At that time, Boulin was the Minister of Labor, and was well on his way to becoming the next prime minister. The revelation of the scandal in the press, however, harshly tarnished his political career and reputation. According to the official account of his death, Boulin was so devastated that it drove him to suicide. The authorities closed the case quickly, attributing his death to drowning.

The spot where Boulin’s body was discovered.

Boulin’s family has publicly denied this. They’ve pointed out that the water he was supposed to have drowned in was only a foot-and-a-half deep. Furthermore, as was only recorded in a second autopsy that was conducted in 1983, there were “bruises around his wrists and a blood clot behind his head.” The judge in charge of the case asked for Boulin’s lungs to be checked to confirm that they contained water, but the jars storing the lungs inexplicably disappeared. Boulin’s family believe that his death was the result of foul play, and have accused his former Gaullist colleagues of plotting and covering up the murder.

After years of keeping quiet, the local policeman who first saw Boulin’s body came out publicly in 2011 with some new information. The officer, Francis Deswarte, reported that Boulin’s head was out of the water, and had red marks all over his face. Deswarte said that he was dismissed from the case only a half-hour later. Two or three months passed, and he was then called in for questioning by federal police, who ordered him to keep quiet about what he saw. When he asked about the red marks, they told him that Boulin’s body had been dropped by the firefighters who were taking it out of the water, despite that Deswarte himself saw the body being removed without a problem.

In light of this new information, no new investigation has been opened.

This article originally appeared on Bizarrepedia, a site full of interesting articles about serial killers, unsolved crimes, and other strange things.

5 Conspiracy Theories About the Death of Marilyn Monroe

August 4, 2015November 1, 2016 / Tristan / 23 Comments

In the early hours of August 5, 1962, movie star Marilyn Monroe was reported dead in her home in Los Angeles, California. She had been found lying face down in her bed, naked and with her hands by her side.

Around midnight, her housekeeper Eunice Murray had noticed that Marilyn’s bedroom light was on. She knocked on the door a few times, but Marilyn didn’t answer. At 3:00 AM, Murray started to worry and called Dr. Ralph Greenson, Marilyn’s psychiatrist. After he failed to knock down her door, he looked through her window and saw her lying on her bed. He then broke the window, checked her for a pulse, and realized she was dead. The police were called at 4:30 AM.

Marilyn Monroe’s bedroom.

When they arrived, they questioned Murray, Greenson, and another doctor on the scene. They inspected the room and noticed that despite that there were empty pill bottles on her nightstand, there was no glass or cup of water anywhere to be found. Greenson estimated that Monroe died around 12:30 AM, while undertaker Guy Hockett thought her time of death sometime between 9:30 and 11:30 PM. The autopsy, conducted by Dr. Thomas Noguchi, concluded that Monroe had overdosed on sedative drugs, possibly to commit suicide.

Marilyn’s body being taken out of her home.

Her death has since been surrounded in controversy, and many of her fans and admirers believe that she was given the pills against her will. The investigation was quick and suspicious, and the official account of her death begs numerous unanswered questions. Why, for example, did it take Murray so long to call for help? What about the reports that Greenson summoned an ambulance and then turned it away after finding Marilyn dead? And how did a drinking glass, after the police search, turn up in Marilyn’s room? Murray would later change her story several times over her life, and the first policeman on the scene, Jack Clemmons, said that “Her hands were by her side and her legs were stretched out perfectly straight. It was the most obviously staged death scene I had ever seen. The pill bottles on her bedside table had been arranged in neat order and the body deliberately positioned, it all looked too tidy.”

There have been numerous theories about what really happened to Marilyn Monroe, many of them placing the blame on the Kennedy brothers or Dr. Ralph Greenson. Below are five of the most common ones, provided by crackpots and experts alike.

5. She was Murdered by Communists

Author and conspiracy theorist Frank A. Cappell.

In June 1964, far right-wing author Frank A. Cappell published arguably the first book that expressed skepticism about the official account of Marilyn’s demise, The Strange Death of Marilyn Monroe. Cappell’s 70 page booklet featured some of the earliest tropes now common in conspiracy circles, including that the Kennedys had a hand in her death. Cappell argued that both Marilyn and Robert F. Kennedy were communists, and that Marilyn was ultimately the victim of a vast communist conspiracy. According to Cappell, “Many ‘suicides’ and ‘heart attacks’ and ‘accidental deaths’ are in reality murders ordered by the Communist Party.”

4. She was Killed by the FBI or CIA

Cover of Norman Mailer’s best-selling biography.

A lot of the ideas in Cappell’s booklet were introduced to the mainstream in Norman Mailer’s best-selling Marilyn: A Biography, which was published in 1973 to great public attention. Mailer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist never shy of provoking controversy, repeated the link between Marilyn’s death and the Kennedys.

He believed, to get back at the Kennedys for the disastrous Bay of Pigs fiasco, right-wing agents of the FBI or CIA killed Marilyn to upset the Kennedy brothers. He also claimed that Marilyn called the White House on the night of her death, and that the FBI confiscated her phone records. Mailer, however, didn’t have a single shed of evidence to back up his claims, and later admitted he only wrote the book for money.

3. It was a Fake Suicide Attempt Gone Awry

Peter Lawford and Marilyn Monroe at John F. Kennedy’s birthday celebration in 1962.

According to this theory, based on a non-authenticated report supposedly circulated among the FBI in 1964, Marilyn thought she could revive her career by making a suicide attempt. Peter Lawford, a friend of Marilyn and the brother-in-law of Robert F. Kennedy, heard about this plan from some of Marilyn’s other friends. After telling Kennedy, whom allegedly was having an affair with Marilyn and wanted to get rid of her, Lawford persuaded Dr. Ralph Greenson and Eunice Murray to help orchestrate the suicide “attempt”.

So Greenson prescribed a few bottles of Seconal tablets to Marilyn, and then Murray is said to have put them in Marilyn’s bedroom on the night of her death. Believing that the pills could easily be pumped out of her stomach, Marilyn swallowed dozens of the them to overdose. After she became unconscious, Murray called Greenson, and they waited to contact the police until Marilyn died.

2. She was the Victim of a Mafia Hit

Mob boss Sam Giancana.

Darwin Porter, a biographer and travel writer who has written dozens of books, claims in Marilyn At Rainbow’s End that Marilyn was killed by the Mafia. Porter speculates that mob boss Sam Giancana, possibly paid off by one of the Kennedy brothers, ordered a hit on her. He said that Robert F. Kennedy had gone to Marilyn’s house that day and gotten into an argument. After he left, a partner of Gianacana named Johnny Roselli visited her at 10 PM.

When he left, he unlocked the front door, and then let five Mafia hitmen in. One of the hitmen sneeked up behind Marilyn while she was in the front room, and then slipped a chloroform-soaked washcloth over her face. They then undressed her, administered an enema of barbiturates, and moved her into her bedroom. They left after hearing Eunice Murray walk into the house. After the police were called, Peter Lawford arrived at the scene and stole a little red diary, which was said to have been filled with details about Marilyn’s affairs and sex encounters.

1. She was Killed by RFK and Ralph Greenson

Marilyn Monroe with the Kennedy brothers.

Journalists Jay Margolis and Richard Buskin in their book The Murder of Marilyn Monroe: Case Closed, repeated the story about Marilyn and Robert F. Kennedy having an affair and then getting into an argument the day before her body was found.

According to this theory Kennedy told Marilyn that he wouldn’t marry her, and Marilyn threatened to stage a public conference and reveal her affairs with him and his brother John. Kennedy demanded that Marilyn leave him alone, and to hand over the diary in which she kept track of her affairs. Marilyn refused, and Kennedy left in a fit of rage.

Dr. Ralph Greenson, Marilyn’s psychiatrist.

He called up her psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, another man Marilyn had been sleeping with. Kennedy falsely told Greenson that she was planning to go public with the affair she was having with him. Greenson, worried that his reputation would be ruined, agreed to go with Kennedy to convince Marilyn to hand over the diary. That evening, Kennedy came back to Marilyn’s house, bringing along two bodyguards, Greenson, and his brother-in-law Peter Lawford.

One of the bodyguards shot Marilyn with an injection of Nembutal to calm her down, and then Kennedy threw her to the floor. While Kennedy and Lawford were looking for the diary, his bodyguards tore Marilyn’s clothes off and administered a powerful enema that would further sedate her. The group of men left around 10:30 PM, and Marilyn’s housekeeper Eunice Murray and son Norman Jefferies found her naked and unconscious on her bed a short while after. They called for an ambulance, and one of the attendants, James Edwin Hall, attempted to revive her with a resuscitator.

Suddenly, Ralph Greenson appeared on the scene, explained who he was, and then ordered Hall to remove the resuscitator. Greenson thrust a foot-long syringe into Marilyn’s chest, and then allowed her to be moved into the ambulance. At about 4:30 AM, Greenson called LAPD sergeant Jack Clemmons and told him that Marilyn had committed suicide. Marilyn was taken back to her home, and her death was subsequently ruled a suspected suicide.